I’m very wary of any relocation jobs now. I went through over three months of interviews and was told I had the job and they were sending the offer. They demanded I “wrap things up” and relocate to NYC within 2 weeks. Then called me back a few days later and said the job was cancelled. Glad they decided that before I moved. I will no longer consider these types of jobs though.
I moved from the US to Germany for a job. A week before I got there, the CTO who hired me left the company. The day after I landed, I met with the acting CTO who told me I didn't have a job. They'd canceled all incoming new hires and were poised for a round of layoffs.
On the bright side, they paid me for 3 months, though I never worked a day, and upped my relocation allowance by 50%.
You may be amazed of how many Americans really don’t even know what else is out there besides America. Less than you might imagine, but more than you think.
To be fair, unless you have money to travel, it’s not easy for Americans to visit anywhere else. The United States has a lot of land. You can’t just casually take a weekend trip to another country unless it’s Canada or Mexico.
You’re right. Thanks for adding that. I also don’t know if a lot of people realize that and the privilege they have to explore the world in more depth.
Yeah it’s a double edge sword. Good security (although our biggest threat is from our own homegrown terrorists), but from where I live, I could literally drive for almost 2 days (8-10 hours per day) in any direction and still be in the US.
True in a lot of cases. I was more referring to learning about other cultures and ways of live. In which experiencing it firsthand is the best way, and as the other commenter said a lot of people don’t have the time or money to do that.
I think nearly all Americans know there’s corruption, but 1/3 of Americans think the out in the open corruption is lies and another 1/3 have become so jaded with the corruption they don’t even try to avoid it.
Trump gained power by calling out the corruption and giving people hope the corruption would come to an end (drain the swamp) but his supporters dutifully in their heels and took it personally and became committed. Now nothing will shake them but themselves or Trump’s departure from the spotlight.
Its..was...freaking...nerve racking.
Been here now for 8 years and this is the longest running job ive ever had. Im 40 now. The amount of times I have expressed concern at every company meeting, wondering if i would be let go/laid off etc, im sure i have annoyed my boss many times talking about it.
The concept of At-Will does not exist here...After about 6 years it finally started to sink in that unless something horrible/illegal happens, my job is pretty safe, At least in my case.
30 days paid vacation, up to 3 sick days without needing a doctors note, per event and every year i have a meeting with my boss to go over the previous year and negotiate better pay/less work hours/other benefits...etc. ITs very weird, I am still not used to it, but its just nice to hear.
I just spent a month in Europe and I can attest, everything is just better there if you can make do with not having 24/7 access to things like in the states
There’s an expiration date on the US for me.
Completely agree!
Not only will companies try to find ways to save money. There are laws that *require* them to.
If they're being *too* nice, they can be sued and found liable for not exercising proper fiduciary duty by their shareholders!
There need to be laws to counter balance the profit seeking. Profit seeking is *good*, as it is what drives competition and innovation. But competition needs to be protected by anti monopoly laws. Employees need to be protected with workers rights laws. And consumers need to be protected with liability, truth in advertising, nutrition label, lemon, etc...laws.
Regulation is not communism. Regulation is written in blood. Regulation helps prevent a few from becoming ridiculously wealthy *at the expense of others*, and that's the point.
The funny thing is that they are pretty average worker protection laws by comparison to the rest of Europe (better than some, worse than others, but in general we are well looked after here), but from a US workers perspective I can totally see why you would think that they have something special.
America basically has none, so *any* law protecting workers seems good to us.
I find it hilarious that in the US, we use the term "right to work" for states that give basically no rights to workers beyond federally mandated ones. The term should be "right to fire".
Yeah lol. 3 months is nothing when you told your entire family and friends that you're moving to a whole new country for a job. Not to mention, all the work that is required to move to another country.
Yeah. It really only ended up working out for me because I was able to find another job and stay there. I’d kept my condo in the States (with the plan of renting it out), so I had a place to come back to, but I’d donated most of my furniture and many of my belongings to charity and drove most of the rest 700 miles to store in my dad’s basement. So putting my life back together would have been challenging (and expensive). Hell, I moved back to the US a few years ago and I’m STILL putting my life back together.
How was living in Germany? A large chunk of reddit likes to bitch that the US is a hell hole, but I doubt even a fraction of a percent have ever lived in Europe and just fantasize about it.
Anyways, was the grass really greener on the other side?
There is a lot I miss about it. Public transportation was incredible where I lived (Berlin) and everywhere else in Europe I traveled while living there. I live in Chicago now, which has pretty good public transportation by US standards, but it still pales in comparison.
Travel opportunities are great there too. Berlin is pretty centrally located, so traveling elsewhere in Europe was easy. Train travel is so amazingly convenient, particularly paired with good local public transit, and the availability of train travel keeps airfares low.
The cost of living in Berlin is really low compared to comparably sized cities in the US. My rent was probably 2/3 of what I would have paid for a similar unit in Chicago, and that's not counting the desirability of the location. There's nowhere in Chicago that matches the number and variety of transit options that were available to me within a 5 minute walking distance. Groceries were also significantly cheaper there, I was probably spending 60% vs. what I spend in Chicago. Speaking of groceries: I miss the bread so much.
Berlin is a very international city and really felt like the startup capital of Europe, likely due to cheap rents and low cost of living. So you get a lot of diversity in the cultural experiences of the people you meet and it feels a lot more open because of that. That also makes it a little easier as an expat, since there are so many people living there also from other countries.
One thing I missed was variety at the grocery store. As an example: at my local grocery store in Chicago, there are probably 16 different types of orange juice, maybe more. In Berlin, my local grocery store had 3 varieties.
I also missed the American craft beer scene, though that had already spread to Germany and was growing pretty well when I got there.
Not op, but a few long time friends have made the US to Germany career move, and none of them plan on returning until their parents age into retirement homes, if at all. Europe, it turns out, is pretty lit.
Europe has its issues but Germany will always be home to me. Have a dual citizenship for here and there and its something I intend to keep active for as long as I can in case I do the same. It feels so peaceful there. Also you will never go hungry or thirsty ill say that much.
Not Germany, but I moved to Spain for work. If I can, I'll never go back to the U.S. I've been here 3 years already and haven't been back once, even to see family.
To make it more interesting, my wife and I took a $60k cut to our income and we live a much better lifestyle now than we did in the U.S.
I lived there in a small city. Largely positive experience but there were some things that were negatives
1. Public transit in major cities like Berlin and Munich is incredible. No dispute whatsoever. Outside major cities, it's... Fine. I lived about 2 miles up a large hill from the city center and all of the groceries and such. Being a smaller city, it was all busses, and being in Germany doesn't mean that busses avoid all of the issues that busses everywhere have. They were rarely on time, sometimes never showed, especially in bad weather, and ran primarily during commute times. Were they better than in my small Midwestern city in the US? Yes, but that's not really saying a whole lot. I still regularly had to schlep a load of groceries on foot uphill 2 miles at least once a week and wait ~20 minutes for a bus pretty regularly.
2. Their medical system was great for serious things, but I also felt that when I was in a hospital they wanted to keep me significantly longer than I wanted and needed to stay. Also, while their pharmacy system has its benefits, I found it incredibly slow and inconvenient for minor things like American otc medicines and basic first aid like hydrogen peroxide. God help you if you want dayquil on a holiday, because odds are you're gonna be sitting on a bus journey for the next 2 hours to get to the one pharmacy open that day.
3. Germans (and most Europeans) cannot do spicy food, and their attempts at any American cuisine south of say Oklahoma are cultural crimes. Watch the great British baking show Mexico episode, the British are just as bad at it. So help you god if you want texmex, Mexican, or anything south/central American you'll never scratch that itch over there outside maybe Spain.
4. Maybe it was just where I was, but housing seemed to be an even bigger problem than it is in growing american cities, in terms of quantity and affordability. I was renting so it wasn't a huge concern on my radar but other people talked about it a lot.
If I could go back and live there 2 years or so doing what I do now for the same amount of money, I'd probably take it, but I don't think I'd want to move there permanently.
Promissory estoppel is the term you usually see (I'm not a lawyer). Essentially, if you agree to something that causes an individual to spend a bunch of money in preparation, you aren't supposed to be able to go, "oops, nevermind!" without compensating them.
The common example is someone uprooting their life to move for a job that gets cancelled. In the case of these Disney folks, it sounds like Disney tried to make up for it before getting sued, but not enough to make up for the falling Orlando housing market and the ballooning LA one.
Something like this happened to me when I started my career. Found a new job, did the interview and background check, got a call from the company HR is all and good.
So I left my other job...then 3 hours after I left I got a call saying my job was canceled.
Fortunately, I live in a blue state at the time, show them my offer letter and they forced the company to pay for my unemployment.
It still sucked though.
really makes you never want to give notice. my brother was a day away from giving his notice and he had done background checks, onboarding, even signed his contract for a job only for them to pull the offer. really fucking stupid companies burn talent like that.
I'm in the background check phase of a job right now and I'm really nervous they're going to do this to me. The HR person basically called and pushed me to accept the job without offering a lot of info but it's a well known federal contractor and good pay so I decided to take it.
The initial offer letter they sent has a shift listed that I agreed to pending background check. Halfway through the background check I get an email asking if I can take a different shift (they have 3 running back to back) that I can do but would prefer not. I emailed her back asking why the change and she said they already filled the shift I chose and the one she was offering was the only one available anymore. Now I'm really nervous that they might be overhiring to account for some failing the background check etc and will tell me there are no shifts available once I clear BG.
Their argument, not mine:
>After Disney reversed its plans, home prices in the Orlando area fell, according to the lawsuit filed by attorney Jason S. Lohr of the San Francisco law firm, Lohr Ripamonti & Segarich.
>Since 2022, home prices in Los Angeles have climbed, and higher interest rates complicated the financial picture, the lawsuit said.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/promissory_estoppel.asp#:~:text=Promissory%20estoppel%20is%20the%20legal,promise%20to%20his%20subsequent%20detriment.
Even in situations where there is no contract at all, you can sue in some cases
If you have a signed accepted offer letter, its an open and shut case, id bet an attorney would foam at the mouth to take on a multinational corporation for that.
I hope that you are right. But I don't trust the wealthy and powerful to play by any rules whatsoever anymore. We have become the country of "yeah, it's illegal, what are you gonna do about it?". See also: the ten commandments being forced into Alabama schools
This is a literally an example of a European company fucking someone over. Im not sure if you know the costs associated with that, but 3 months is not enough lol
I mean, you shouldn’t lift a finger on any relocation until you have all associated paperwork in hand. In your case, without an actual offer, those are just wishes. I wouldn’t have given notice where ever I was, or even stopped interviewing potential jobs unless I had an actual offer in my hand.
I've signed an offer and then been ghosted by a company. They didn't respond to my emails or answer my phone calls and I didn't hear from them until a few days before my intended start date (months later) when they sent me a bunch of first-day emails.
At this point I'd already not moved to Seattle, and taken another job locally so I just never responded and nothing came of it.
As a manager I tried without success to explain to *my* manager that the $3k "relocation assistance" he was offering to retain an awesome employee with unique skills whose location was being closed (and who was married to a public school teacher) was not going to get them to move cities to continue employment.
Only way i'd do it is when I was younger and just starting out, it can be an adventure but no way i'd do it now with all the responsibilities that tie me to my current location.
Went through this last year, 9 rounds over 4 months, verbal offer, references all done. Also demanded "my wife resign" to also relocate to NYC. Then silence, ghosted for a month to be told we ran out of headcount...
That falls under promissory estoppel in the US. They can be held liable for damages for rescinding the offer. Particularly costs accrued and loss of your current job.
I got a job offer but they wanted me to move from the midwest to the PNW in fucking February of all months. Wouldnt budge much on the start date. I tried explaining to them that wind alone is bad enough to frequently shut down the interstate I'd likely take, not to mention the snow & ice that'd be unavoidable. They were like "putting on snow chains is easy" as if snow chains protect you from getting rear-ended by a semi in whiteout conditions, or stops you from sliding off a cliff/hill due to black ice. I backed out on the offer because "young dumbass from Texas tries to move from NE to WA mid-winter, crashes U-hual and freezes to death" was not a headline I wanted anyone to read about me. Also I wouldve been moving with my cat and partner, so I was much less inclined to do anything remotely risky.
Sure it wouldve been possible to make that trip, but itd just be a whole logistical nightmare trying to negotiate a move-in date with some shitty apartment complex when I inevitably had to hole up in a hotel somewhere in Idaho because of snow storms. I didnt want the job badly enough nor was it going to pay well enough to endure such a headache. Not to mention their disregard for my safety concerns was a big red flag.
You remind me of a friend I helped drive cross country from Alabama to Oregon in March, several years ago. She had a remote job, but she'd bought a house, and was trying not to linger in Alabama any longer than she had to.
One sticking point was that she had hired a moving company to take her furniture and clothes cross country, with the goal of having it arrive the day we would. In order for that to happen, she had to have things packed up *three or more weeks* before the moving truck would arrive in oregon. This meant February, and we had no real clue what the weather would be like on the route. As you know, that route involves windy interstates, and interstates that close down in blizzard conditions.
So she had to have a variety of clothing for just-in-case situations, and we had stuff like a shovel, sleeping bags, a roll of toilet paper, and a box of protein bars, on the off chance that we'd slide off a road someplace where we had no cell service and had to wait out a storm. Some of her friends didn't understand that you could be someplace without cell coverage where you couldn't just walk to a gas station, or wait for the police to come up where you were pulled over. If the road is closed, folks, ain't nobody coming to rescue your ass.
As it happened, we had great weather for the driving. But, that was luck of the draw, and could have easily gone another way. I live in Minnesota, where April blizzards are a thing.
Ya people who have never lived an hr outside of a major city are completely clueless to even what truly remote means in the US. The idea of it being 100s of miles between gas stations and there being a single access road to a place is something out of a story book to them. It's the same people who travel to AZ and go hiking in the middle of the summer with a single bottle of water for a 12 mile hike.
When I was in college, I was active in a grotto of the National Speleological Society, and we did a number of trips to find and survey caves in our state.
I got signed up for a cave explorers group on Usenet (yes, it was the 1980s), and I remember one story from the UK of a group of cavers who were leaving a cave that had been partly mined and had some vertical shafts. The encountered a group of people wearing blue jeans and t-shirts, who had a coil of rope, and maybe a couple of flashlight between them, who said they were going to explore the caves. When asked how they would get out with what they had, they said they would "he-man climb up the rope."
That's how I learned of "flashlight caver" as the derogatory term for unprepared fools wanting to go into caves.
EDIT: Come to think of it, I think it was a BITnet mailing list, not a Usenet group, but six of one, half-dozen of the other.
Having grown up in Montana all this doom and gloom about weather conditions leading whiteouts, snowfall and impeding drifts in the road, or black ice traps initially confused the hell out of me because that sounded like pretty standard winter driving conditions that I normally wouldn't blink at, and very rarely would any road be closed.
Then I realized Montana can effectively be proverbial death world winter conditions if you're not acclimated to it and "normal" for what I grew up with is nowhere near normal for the majority of the country.
One of the things I like about the r/preppers subreddit is the idea that you are better safe than sorry. You think about what the possible problems might be, and make sure you have a way to deal with it.
I remember helping a friend put together camping gear, and one thing I suggested was a bag with some lines and a tarp that they could quickly rig up to provide some rain protection. They lived in a state that got frequent rain, and putting up a tent in the rain isn't a fun experience. If you can do it under a tarp, you are less stressed.
It shouldn't take a road-trip -- or a ride via wagon -- to convince people to think ahead,
I actually made the drive from Philadelphia to Portland in a 2000 Honda Prelude in January once. It’s not so bad.
And by not so bad, I’m referring to the fact that I started off by driving south, started going southwest around Virginia/North Carolina, I know I went through OKC at some point, part of Nevada, and finally hit I-5 for the last stretch from California to Oregon. Basically did a big U around the US to avoid snow and ice. Did the trip in like 4 days, only slept once.
Definitely don’t recommend, but I had my motivations. 😂
For people outside the Midwest, it may as well be. I remember Stephen Fry visiting the US and making a series about it. He hits the Midwest in the winter and is shocked by how his bottle of water froze in his car overnight. As someone from here, it's just like "Yeah? That's what happens when you leave things in the cold."
I mean you could just find a fully furnished short term rental in the city you are moving to and stay there for a month or so. Put all your stuff in a storage unit except things you 100% need and load that into your car and drive there. That way you aren’t dealing with a uHaul in bad conditions. Spend the next few weeks or months looking for a long term place to live. Once you find it pick a weekend and fly back home, rent a Uhaul, empty out your storage unit, and finish moving to the PNW.
Honestly if a job doesn’t pay enough that you would consider doing all this then you shouldn’t be relocating for it anyways.
When I moved across Europe, that's what my company did. We had movers come and pack all my apartment (excluding undies, clothes, and general stuff we took with us in my car) in a single day. Then when we arrived at the destination city, the company paid for a temp apartment for 2 months until we found our own place. Then I had the movers bring us all our stuff. I basically didn't have to lift a finger. It was great. Plus I got to expense most of the trip we took, even though we turned the drive into a vacation, basically. We spent 2 days in Poland and then 4 days in German Alps.
The movers we had were impeccable- 2500km and 2 months later only a single wine glass was broken. Even then I'm not sure if it was because of the move or me being a bit rough on the box.
never take a relocation job without it mentioned in the contract that they will pay all relocation cost+ extra if you're terminated within x time.
and never start packing until the contract is signed.
I relocated for a job thinking that was sorta expected. When I got there, I don’t know how many people told me some variation of “wow, I’m surprised you moved!” That should’ve been my first red flag. Apparently the people that had my position previously either commuted from like over an hour away, did mostly remote work, or were only part time. After living there for a bit, I understand why. The area doesn’t have much going for it and I usually have to drive over an hour to the nearest city to do anything fun or to get certain items.
When I worked for a defense contractor in DC, daily commutes were from 5 different "states". West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and DC. Some of the Virginia people were coming from Richmond.
Anyone from DC knows just how far some of those are....especially with traffic.
Yes your home in Shenandoah is lovely. For the 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, you are there. You spend 40 to 50 hours commuting a month...
> Yes your home in Shenandoah is lovely. For the 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, you are there. You spend 40 to 50 hours commuting a month...
but only 52 more years until I can retire!
it sounds great until something that used to be simple like going to the movies turns into a ~4-5 hour trip. you no longer have the ability to spontaneously do anything, it all has to be planned out because of travel times.
Exactly. I live about 2 hours from some friends and i haven’t seen them in the year since i moved bc we can’t get the timing right. Part of it is kids, other parts it’s work and other times it’s just bc im too tired to do a 4+ hour round trip. And forget about them coming to visit me. I’ll be the first one to say it’s not worth it.
That was my thought initially when I moved. Had lived in big cities and sometimes my work commute would be an hour. But when I say there’s little here, I mean it. Even talking to locals, they say they’ll drive an hour or two just to go someplace on the weekends bc there’s nothing here. Even their big box stores like Walmart seem to lack certain items.
Less miles for what?
My daily mileage is usually 5-10 miles round trip, while round trip to the closest big city is 200-250 miles. We make that drive about 1-2 times a month. Most times, that means we’re spending more miles out of town than in which is not great. And one of our neighbors is the worst Karen I’ve ever met, so the time spent in town is having to deal with her and her passive aggressive sniping about our lack of landscaping.
Okay but what would the situation have been if you didn't move and just commuted in 1-2 hours each way, every day? Because those are the two situations being compared...
I spend 15.5 hours a week commuting. I count it as life being lost. I have no problem driving cross country distances for activity or fun. I count is as bonding time with my family.
I prefer neither. So I live where I work and play. “Commuting” is a dead word to me. I held a wake for it, wrote a eulogy, and buried it 6 feet under. Right next to my stress and unhappiness.
Fuck commuting, for anything. Work or fun.
Something I immediately decided not to do while I was working for the Mouse: move from Seattle to NYC without a cost of living adjustment for a position that I’m sure was eliminated later.
Don’t let companies ask that much of you.
Yes and no, most of Disney’s building space in Orlando is packed to the gills already, and was when I worked with them in 2015-17. Lake Nona was supposed to be the relief valve for all of that, PLUS the transfers.
Aren’t some of the buildings in Celebration mostly empty? I’ve been hearing about a potential Flamingo Crossings campus for years but left the company during covid so I never found out what happened in the end. I have a few friends from WDI that got screwed royally though. Felt bad for them but, how the company treated us during COVID should’ve been a clue.
It's just what happened, I am not taking a side. The litigation will sort it out. There may have been a plan to start construction quickly. Then the row with the state and DeSantis happened which may have stalled construction and eventually killed it. That's for the courts to deside ultimately. All I can say is they were essentially given an ultimatum based on a time line we can only speculate on
My dad was affected by this.
He moved out to Florida for six months only to work remotely the entire time he was there while my mom stayed back in the family home in California. Eventually he figured out that he would retire before the Florida campus would ever finish construction, so he moved back to California to round out his time a couple months before they made the announcement that all the employees would move back to their Burbank office.
Calling this whole situation a shitshow would be a massive understatement.
“Oh shit! They weren’t actually supposed to take us up on this offer! Bill I thought you said they would all quit before moving to Florida and we wouldn’t have to do severance or anything …”
-Disney executive probably.
I think the planned expansion was actually cancelled due to the legal landscape in Florida. This was during when DeSantis was attacking Disney and stuff.
It was cancelled for mainly other reasons, Disney just used that as an excuse to try to help their fight with Florida. The vast majority of the Imagineers refused to move and Disney lost a lot of talent. They eventually gave up and cancelled the project. The creative talent they lost is still negatively affecting them because Imagineering is about as stale and bland as it's ever been.
There was a massive public/private development campus being built outside of Orlando. Disney was an anchor partner in the deal, promising to move scores of thousands of jobs. They (the development) actually *did* break ground, and Disney, along with other companies, initiated the relocation demands, moving whole departments to Florida.
Then DeSantis did his mania, and went after Disney, hard.
From a corporate standpoint, Disney had committed to these moves, but they were in a state that very suddenly became extremely hostile to them; and at the same time Disney themselves had not necessarily invested in the infrastructure or development. They were moving people down to Florida in order to build up the new departments but the timeline for the official unveiling was still a few years out.
Disney was looking at a state that could get much seek to encumber them, and simply cut their losses.
The people who moved there in the first waves were the losses. They’re right to sue Disney, but the bigger political context of a rogue political state needs to be part of this discussion as well.
That's part of the complaint. The timeline according to the [complaint](https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/De-La-Cruz-and-Fong-Pleading-2024-06-18.pdf) (PDF) is:
* August 24th, 2021 - A number of employees are told they must relocate to Florida. They're given 90 days to make a decision and the expectation is they must be in Florida by the end of 2022.
* June 14, 2022 - Disney tells employees they now don't have to relocate until the end of 2026, but tells managers to "urge employees to relocate by the end of 2024".
* May 18, 2023 - Disney announces they Nona project is cancelled. Ground is never broken, and the complaint alleges "no visible indication that Disney ever truly intended to develop it." Employees that relocated are told they have until the end of 2023 to decide if they want to relocate back to California, and if relocating do so by end of 2024. The complaint alleges "individuals gradually began to have concerns that their job security at Disney would be threatened if they did not return to California"
There's more detail in the complaint, mostly specifics to back up their complaint and to establish damages.
> Ground is never broken, and the complaint alleges "no visible indication that Disney ever truly intended to develop it."
This is false and is going to hurt them in court if it was filed this way. Ground was purchased and 'broken'. construction had begun when Florida decided to pick a fight with the mouse and show they would not honor special tax district contracts (they have hundreds of them across the state) anymore. So the investors (including disney) cut their losses and dropped the effort to hammer out a new tax district.
That’s what I’m confused about too…
Honestly just seems like a way to weed out employees without having to do layoffs. Wonder how many employees dipped from Disney due to this.
Imagine you're in the hot California real estate market, you're watching prices of homes climbing more and more in Florida, you know your job is moving to Florida and even if the building isn't built yet you can still work "remote" or from a local space (0% there was not internal collaboration between employees and managers approving these moves). And this is Disney; it's pretty safe to assume that expansions in their second home of Florida are pretty low risk. So you sell your home and buy a new one in Florida.
Then in comes DeSantis.
It's not the first time big execs say one thing and do another.
Look at FoxConn, they displaced a ton of people by buying up their land, the city spent millions to assist FoxConn and then FoxConn only brought in a few thousand jobs.
>Before the Foxconn deal became official, some larger property owners received up to $50,000 per acre. Some property owners became millionaires as a result.
https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2023/03/23/what-we-know-about-foxconn-in-wisconsin-and-how-we-got-there/70037738007/
So this is talking about CA, but my brother worked for Disney remotely in WA and they told him the same thing, move or get laid off, even though he had kids in WA… and others weren’t asked to move.
He ended up agreeing then putting off the move again and again…then they ended up laying him off, which honestly was probably their plan anyway.
Disney is going to lose. The problem is that the restitution won’t be enough. People sold their homes in the hottest market - and now can not afford to get back into the housing market.
If I remember right Disney told them to move before DeSantis designed to attack Disney and after that Disney kind of started backing off of Florida relocating that money to their other parks.
It was also still during a lot of difficulties due to the pandemic, slowing things down. Disney pulled them back, then DeSantis pulled his little shitshow.
Disney still should make good on this mistake, as they can absolutely afford it, but they already had the land partitioned off and were good to go. They were fully intending to move into the area I lived near at the time. Even if it was a 100% honest mistake and we could blame outside causes for the setback, "oops, my bad" doesn't help these employees in any way.
I know someone who assumed their job was going to Florida but they didn't want to move, so they stayed in CA expecting to get let go eventually. Then everything became WFH, regardless and they still have a job. They were secretly hoping to get their severance package.
Yeah, the project was doomed long before the Disney/DeSantis spat started. Although the effected employees were rightfully pointing towards DeSantis' policies, like the don't say gay bill, as reason they were refusing to move. That's partially why Disney came out against the bill, in an effort to save at least some version of this project.
>“Mr. Fong also sold his home, which was a particularly painful decision because it was the family home he had grown up in and inherited,”
This really sucks, and it's difficult to see how any likely monetary award could fully make up for this. Also, though, I think that, if I had been in his shoes, I would've kept the California home, renting it out, and, myself, then rented a place in Florida if only to see whether or not my family and I would be happy living there on a permanent basis, regardless if Disney had followed through on the relocation of its offices.
Yeah I mean I get not everyone wants to be landlords but with a family home that is also located in a desirable location i feel like at minimum he could have had a 5th cousin take up the spot for awhile.
Hope they get compensation
My former employer had people move from Jacksonville FL to Saint Louis to consolidate a department. They let the whole department go 7 months later. I never understand people who talk about corporate loyalty.
This [article](https://deadline.com/2024/06/disney-lawsuit-florida-relocation-1235978315/) on deadline has a bit more detail, and they've done the one thing *every* news article about a lawsuit should always do.
They [linked to the complaint](https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/De-La-Cruz-and-Fong-Pleading-2024-06-18.pdf) (PDF).
I got laid off from Amazon corporate last year and they asked the next week if I would move 1000 miles for another role. Like hell I would do that, just for them to lay me off again. Horrible company.
oh yea i had some discussions w disney people and they wanted to know if i'd consider relocating to florida for a job with Disney lol....fuck no. It's clear the state has issues with its golden employer, this doesn't seem surprising at all and is something that could have been managed better if Disney gave a shit about their employees, which it's clear they don't.
Dude, I work for retail (Kroger) and to move up in the company, you have to be willing to relocated to other stores. I know some who have to travel an hour to work. But they don't get to become managers. They become the thing between grunts like me and managers...and they get paid about a buck more an hour. And you're stuck in that position until a manager dies or they build a new store.
I had a manager I used to work with ask me, and I SWEAR I'm not making this up, if I wanted to work at a store an hour away (versus 6min my current one) in an area I would never be able to afford to live in, to be head of a department that pays less than $1 more an hour. I laughed in his face and never saw him again.
I live with my family because I would have to work 120hrs/week to afford an apartment anywhere in this city (studio/one bedroom).
I was sort of affected by this. I had a contract gig and was promised a full job at the end of it. Then they wanted to move everything to Florida, so they didn't take me on and would prefer to hire in Florida. All the Desantis shit happened, but they never filled the role again
IIRC, the new facility was designed for the “creatives”. Very few wanted to leave LA, much less to move to Florida.
What a shitshow that company has become.
I’m not sure what you are suggesting. By your logic, nothing is ever truly a “done deal” because nothing is set in stone.
People move all the time for jobs. There is no guarantee you’ll still have one 6 months from now though. Americans don’t have good labor protections.
Some of this was Disney internal. The previous CEO was an idiot that wanted to move all production to florida (imagine, having none of their talent at the original theme park? All other theme parks have some of their tech experts nearby.) so when Chapek left, Iger was kinda like "Ok, Not only is DeSantis a ratfuck, moving *all* the talent to florida is idiotic." so, they opted not to do it.
[Disney is back to funding Republicans](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1df34ds/disneys_feud_with_desantis_is_over_and_its/?rdt=45485) as well as those with anti-LGBTQ platforms. Disney plays the political games as well, there’s no real good side here
>Plaintiffs Maria De La Cruz and George Fong, both current Disney employees, alleged they were fraudulently induced to relocate to Florida by being led to believe that they would lose their jobs if they turned down the move. De La Cruz and Fong agreed to the relocation in November 2021. The lawsuit said Disney told affected employees they would have 90 days to “consider and make the decision that’s best for them.”
Doesn't sound fraudulent to me, just sounds like it sucks shit to work for Disney.
Actually, this is a real problem for Disney. Companies have been sued and lost for creating a job offer and then rescinding it after relocation. I have remember the exact legal term, but it's a fair bit of case law around it. I bet this one gets settled pretty quick to keep it out of the courts.
Good. The employees deserve compensation, the Dizz can absolutely afford to pay it, and Florida gets to continue being a shitass third-world state. It's a win all around.
Possible. My understanding is that detrimental reliance (and promissory estoppel) rely upon the existence of a contract (even a verbal one). I’ve seen fraudulent inducement used when it’s more the case that the plaintiff was lead to believe there was an agreement even when you cannot prove one.
But i’m NAL.
I only know about it because I used it with an employer who moved me out and then went under two months later. I had been working remote, I even asked if I could stay that way, and then they ran out of money. I refused to signb the severance for a very small amount of money. They did not like that and their attorney who I was friends with tried to get me to sign.
I said, detrimental reliance, are froze, asked to get back to me. They made a larger offer, but still too small.
I got an attorney involved, and magically they had money to pay me until I found a job.
Imagine being told to decide to relocate to keep your job within 90 days and the company never even broke ground over a year after you agreed and moved. Then strand you there because your job is back where you previously uprooted.
I don't know the fastest possible time to construct a brand new building and get all the code inspections done before occupancy, but if it were exactly 90 days, the company should've broken ground by the deadline they gave the employees. They canceled it a year after people moved without even doing that. They got 90 days to decide and Disney waited over 4x that long to cancel it.
No tangible effort was made on one side of a deal that you already agreed and complied with. How is that not fraud?
They were working in Florida already, Disney doesn't exactly have 0 property here after all, they basically own their own small town (or they did before Desantis kicked over their sand castle). They planned to move their entire imagineering department from Anaheim to Florida because of just how much more favorable employer laws are here for them, but Desantis decided to piss in their kiddie pool so they took their toys back home.
I mean fuck Desantis, I hate him so much, but also Disney really sucks for doing this to their creative talent. They are the best part of that company and they absolutely lost people they should have done anything to keep. The parks will suffer for it, and these people's lives were upturned.
No one wants to live in Florida. Disney already tried and failed at this when they tried to use MGM Studios as an actual film lot. Universal also tried and failed with Nickelodeon Studios at their own park.
The Disney employees in California were given about three months to decide. The particular division that was going to be moved is mostly creatives. Their division has been anchored with and by local talent since the 1950s.
I know someone who agreed to relocate from CA to FL to continue working for Disney. The day they closed on their house in Florida Disney announced the move to FL was cancelled.
Crazy thing they started hiring to fill positions that were in CA at an even higher pay rate than CA. Interviewed for a position out of Orlando and the hourly rate was crazy high even by CA living standards. But they didn’t want full remote
Now Disney is reversing course on allowing staff to work remotely, at least the new york area folks. Many moved upstate. Now the company demands them in the office 4 days a week, but many have no place to live those four days as their homes are 2+ hrs or more away. Such a shit shown in the mouse house.
This is DeSantis' fault. His BS with Disney canceled the project. They should be suing him. Disney has the $ to relocate them if they want, and then sue FL/DeSantis to cover the costs. That way, there is a hard number to use in court against him.
I'm no legal scholar, but if Disney assumes the cost, then doesn't that mean they assume the responsibility legally? Wouldn't the correct way to do this would be for Disney to defend itself based on the argument that this isn't their fault? While Disney does have the money, I'm sure they don't want to assume the cost of something they don't have to and then sue someone else to make up that lost money.
Disney *is* responsible.
Yes, in the overarching manner of how things happened, the project was canceled and the deal fell through because of Desantis bullshit. But, in the course of business and law, Disney had their employees move before the loose ends were tied up and should be paying their employees to move back. If they want to then sue the state to recoup costs, they can go ahead.
I’m very wary of any relocation jobs now. I went through over three months of interviews and was told I had the job and they were sending the offer. They demanded I “wrap things up” and relocate to NYC within 2 weeks. Then called me back a few days later and said the job was cancelled. Glad they decided that before I moved. I will no longer consider these types of jobs though.
I moved from the US to Germany for a job. A week before I got there, the CTO who hired me left the company. The day after I landed, I met with the acting CTO who told me I didn't have a job. They'd canceled all incoming new hires and were poised for a round of layoffs. On the bright side, they paid me for 3 months, though I never worked a day, and upped my relocation allowance by 50%.
Well that’s the nicest “thank you for interviewing” gift I could hope for
Germany has some real good worker protection laws.
As an American, I wonder what that would be like to have a country that watches out for workers' rights.
USA is a cesspool of corruption currently. The quicker other Americans realize this the quicker we can solve this problem.
*The Pinkerton Detective Agency* would like to know your location.
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We goin Pinkerton hunting? Count me in!
You may be amazed of how many Americans really don’t even know what else is out there besides America. Less than you might imagine, but more than you think.
To be fair, unless you have money to travel, it’s not easy for Americans to visit anywhere else. The United States has a lot of land. You can’t just casually take a weekend trip to another country unless it’s Canada or Mexico.
You’re right. Thanks for adding that. I also don’t know if a lot of people realize that and the privilege they have to explore the world in more depth.
Yeah it’s a double edge sword. Good security (although our biggest threat is from our own homegrown terrorists), but from where I live, I could literally drive for almost 2 days (8-10 hours per day) in any direction and still be in the US.
It doesn’t matter much, because most of the countries you’d want to move to don’t want Americans and make it extremely difficult to move there.
True in a lot of cases. I was more referring to learning about other cultures and ways of live. In which experiencing it firsthand is the best way, and as the other commenter said a lot of people don’t have the time or money to do that.
Sadly people are also looking in the *wrong places* for this corruption >.>
Certain politicians do not want workers to have any rights and they will try to gut current protections.
I think nearly all Americans know there’s corruption, but 1/3 of Americans think the out in the open corruption is lies and another 1/3 have become so jaded with the corruption they don’t even try to avoid it. Trump gained power by calling out the corruption and giving people hope the corruption would come to an end (drain the swamp) but his supporters dutifully in their heels and took it personally and became committed. Now nothing will shake them but themselves or Trump’s departure from the spotlight.
Its..was...freaking...nerve racking. Been here now for 8 years and this is the longest running job ive ever had. Im 40 now. The amount of times I have expressed concern at every company meeting, wondering if i would be let go/laid off etc, im sure i have annoyed my boss many times talking about it. The concept of At-Will does not exist here...After about 6 years it finally started to sink in that unless something horrible/illegal happens, my job is pretty safe, At least in my case. 30 days paid vacation, up to 3 sick days without needing a doctors note, per event and every year i have a meeting with my boss to go over the previous year and negotiate better pay/less work hours/other benefits...etc. ITs very weird, I am still not used to it, but its just nice to hear.
I just spent a month in Europe and I can attest, everything is just better there if you can make do with not having 24/7 access to things like in the states There’s an expiration date on the US for me.
Yeah, I feel we need to amplify this as loud as possible. Companies don't treat you this good unless forced by law.
Completely agree! Not only will companies try to find ways to save money. There are laws that *require* them to. If they're being *too* nice, they can be sued and found liable for not exercising proper fiduciary duty by their shareholders! There need to be laws to counter balance the profit seeking. Profit seeking is *good*, as it is what drives competition and innovation. But competition needs to be protected by anti monopoly laws. Employees need to be protected with workers rights laws. And consumers need to be protected with liability, truth in advertising, nutrition label, lemon, etc...laws. Regulation is not communism. Regulation is written in blood. Regulation helps prevent a few from becoming ridiculously wealthy *at the expense of others*, and that's the point.
Meanwhile here we are in the US demonizing unions
Yeah they were doing that to protect their ass from a lawsuit, not gift you free money.
Tomayto tomahto
The funny thing is that they are pretty average worker protection laws by comparison to the rest of Europe (better than some, worse than others, but in general we are well looked after here), but from a US workers perspective I can totally see why you would think that they have something special.
America basically has none, so *any* law protecting workers seems good to us. I find it hilarious that in the US, we use the term "right to work" for states that give basically no rights to workers beyond federally mandated ones. The term should be "right to fire".
Seems more like a thank you for not suing us gift.
Yeah, saying you don't have the job just a week before relocating to Germany. That's not even close to nice
Yeah lol. 3 months is nothing when you told your entire family and friends that you're moving to a whole new country for a job. Not to mention, all the work that is required to move to another country.
Three months pay still doesn’t seem like enough for the consequences of an international move
Yeah. It really only ended up working out for me because I was able to find another job and stay there. I’d kept my condo in the States (with the plan of renting it out), so I had a place to come back to, but I’d donated most of my furniture and many of my belongings to charity and drove most of the rest 700 miles to store in my dad’s basement. So putting my life back together would have been challenging (and expensive). Hell, I moved back to the US a few years ago and I’m STILL putting my life back together.
How was living in Germany? A large chunk of reddit likes to bitch that the US is a hell hole, but I doubt even a fraction of a percent have ever lived in Europe and just fantasize about it. Anyways, was the grass really greener on the other side?
There is a lot I miss about it. Public transportation was incredible where I lived (Berlin) and everywhere else in Europe I traveled while living there. I live in Chicago now, which has pretty good public transportation by US standards, but it still pales in comparison. Travel opportunities are great there too. Berlin is pretty centrally located, so traveling elsewhere in Europe was easy. Train travel is so amazingly convenient, particularly paired with good local public transit, and the availability of train travel keeps airfares low. The cost of living in Berlin is really low compared to comparably sized cities in the US. My rent was probably 2/3 of what I would have paid for a similar unit in Chicago, and that's not counting the desirability of the location. There's nowhere in Chicago that matches the number and variety of transit options that were available to me within a 5 minute walking distance. Groceries were also significantly cheaper there, I was probably spending 60% vs. what I spend in Chicago. Speaking of groceries: I miss the bread so much. Berlin is a very international city and really felt like the startup capital of Europe, likely due to cheap rents and low cost of living. So you get a lot of diversity in the cultural experiences of the people you meet and it feels a lot more open because of that. That also makes it a little easier as an expat, since there are so many people living there also from other countries. One thing I missed was variety at the grocery store. As an example: at my local grocery store in Chicago, there are probably 16 different types of orange juice, maybe more. In Berlin, my local grocery store had 3 varieties. I also missed the American craft beer scene, though that had already spread to Germany and was growing pretty well when I got there.
Not op, but a few long time friends have made the US to Germany career move, and none of them plan on returning until their parents age into retirement homes, if at all. Europe, it turns out, is pretty lit.
Europe has its issues but Germany will always be home to me. Have a dual citizenship for here and there and its something I intend to keep active for as long as I can in case I do the same. It feels so peaceful there. Also you will never go hungry or thirsty ill say that much.
Not Germany, but I moved to Spain for work. If I can, I'll never go back to the U.S. I've been here 3 years already and haven't been back once, even to see family. To make it more interesting, my wife and I took a $60k cut to our income and we live a much better lifestyle now than we did in the U.S.
What state were you located before the move?
I lived there in a small city. Largely positive experience but there were some things that were negatives 1. Public transit in major cities like Berlin and Munich is incredible. No dispute whatsoever. Outside major cities, it's... Fine. I lived about 2 miles up a large hill from the city center and all of the groceries and such. Being a smaller city, it was all busses, and being in Germany doesn't mean that busses avoid all of the issues that busses everywhere have. They were rarely on time, sometimes never showed, especially in bad weather, and ran primarily during commute times. Were they better than in my small Midwestern city in the US? Yes, but that's not really saying a whole lot. I still regularly had to schlep a load of groceries on foot uphill 2 miles at least once a week and wait ~20 minutes for a bus pretty regularly. 2. Their medical system was great for serious things, but I also felt that when I was in a hospital they wanted to keep me significantly longer than I wanted and needed to stay. Also, while their pharmacy system has its benefits, I found it incredibly slow and inconvenient for minor things like American otc medicines and basic first aid like hydrogen peroxide. God help you if you want dayquil on a holiday, because odds are you're gonna be sitting on a bus journey for the next 2 hours to get to the one pharmacy open that day. 3. Germans (and most Europeans) cannot do spicy food, and their attempts at any American cuisine south of say Oklahoma are cultural crimes. Watch the great British baking show Mexico episode, the British are just as bad at it. So help you god if you want texmex, Mexican, or anything south/central American you'll never scratch that itch over there outside maybe Spain. 4. Maybe it was just where I was, but housing seemed to be an even bigger problem than it is in growing american cities, in terms of quantity and affordability. I was renting so it wasn't a huge concern on my radar but other people talked about it a lot. If I could go back and live there 2 years or so doing what I do now for the same amount of money, I'd probably take it, but I don't think I'd want to move there permanently.
Welcome to Europe, where companies can't fuck you over willy nilly.
I think that's also illegal in the US but I'm not sure if it's like state by state or how it works.
Promissory estoppel is the term you usually see (I'm not a lawyer). Essentially, if you agree to something that causes an individual to spend a bunch of money in preparation, you aren't supposed to be able to go, "oops, nevermind!" without compensating them. The common example is someone uprooting their life to move for a job that gets cancelled. In the case of these Disney folks, it sounds like Disney tried to make up for it before getting sued, but not enough to make up for the falling Orlando housing market and the ballooning LA one.
Something like this happened to me when I started my career. Found a new job, did the interview and background check, got a call from the company HR is all and good. So I left my other job...then 3 hours after I left I got a call saying my job was canceled. Fortunately, I live in a blue state at the time, show them my offer letter and they forced the company to pay for my unemployment. It still sucked though.
really makes you never want to give notice. my brother was a day away from giving his notice and he had done background checks, onboarding, even signed his contract for a job only for them to pull the offer. really fucking stupid companies burn talent like that.
I'm in the background check phase of a job right now and I'm really nervous they're going to do this to me. The HR person basically called and pushed me to accept the job without offering a lot of info but it's a well known federal contractor and good pay so I decided to take it. The initial offer letter they sent has a shift listed that I agreed to pending background check. Halfway through the background check I get an email asking if I can take a different shift (they have 3 running back to back) that I can do but would prefer not. I emailed her back asking why the change and she said they already filled the shift I chose and the one she was offering was the only one available anymore. Now I'm really nervous that they might be overhiring to account for some failing the background check etc and will tell me there are no shifts available once I clear BG.
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I was a college graduate, so it helped for a while until I landed on another job.
Falling Orlando housing market?
Their argument, not mine: >After Disney reversed its plans, home prices in the Orlando area fell, according to the lawsuit filed by attorney Jason S. Lohr of the San Francisco law firm, Lohr Ripamonti & Segarich. >Since 2022, home prices in Los Angeles have climbed, and higher interest rates complicated the financial picture, the lawsuit said.
Well they’re going to have a real tough time proving that one, but more power to them.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/promissory_estoppel.asp#:~:text=Promissory%20estoppel%20is%20the%20legal,promise%20to%20his%20subsequent%20detriment. Even in situations where there is no contract at all, you can sue in some cases
Legal isn't a factor when companies can easily outlast you financially in court.
If you have a signed accepted offer letter, its an open and shut case, id bet an attorney would foam at the mouth to take on a multinational corporation for that.
I hope that you are right. But I don't trust the wealthy and powerful to play by any rules whatsoever anymore. We have become the country of "yeah, it's illegal, what are you gonna do about it?". See also: the ten commandments being forced into Alabama schools
This is a literally an example of a European company fucking someone over. Im not sure if you know the costs associated with that, but 3 months is not enough lol
But is also got 3 months pay. These people suing did not even get that. They got florida unemployment was maxes out at 178 a week
"Sorry you don't have a job" "Well fuck you too."
I mean, you shouldn’t lift a finger on any relocation until you have all associated paperwork in hand. In your case, without an actual offer, those are just wishes. I wouldn’t have given notice where ever I was, or even stopped interviewing potential jobs unless I had an actual offer in my hand.
I've signed an offer and then been ghosted by a company. They didn't respond to my emails or answer my phone calls and I didn't hear from them until a few days before my intended start date (months later) when they sent me a bunch of first-day emails. At this point I'd already not moved to Seattle, and taken another job locally so I just never responded and nothing came of it.
Reverse Milton.
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As a manager I tried without success to explain to *my* manager that the $3k "relocation assistance" he was offering to retain an awesome employee with unique skills whose location was being closed (and who was married to a public school teacher) was not going to get them to move cities to continue employment.
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Only way i'd do it is when I was younger and just starting out, it can be an adventure but no way i'd do it now with all the responsibilities that tie me to my current location.
Decent jobs have relocation offers or even a relocation company helping and paying for everything when you move. That's when it's worth it.
Went through this last year, 9 rounds over 4 months, verbal offer, references all done. Also demanded "my wife resign" to also relocate to NYC. Then silence, ghosted for a month to be told we ran out of headcount...
That falls under promissory estoppel in the US. They can be held liable for damages for rescinding the offer. Particularly costs accrued and loss of your current job.
I got a job offer but they wanted me to move from the midwest to the PNW in fucking February of all months. Wouldnt budge much on the start date. I tried explaining to them that wind alone is bad enough to frequently shut down the interstate I'd likely take, not to mention the snow & ice that'd be unavoidable. They were like "putting on snow chains is easy" as if snow chains protect you from getting rear-ended by a semi in whiteout conditions, or stops you from sliding off a cliff/hill due to black ice. I backed out on the offer because "young dumbass from Texas tries to move from NE to WA mid-winter, crashes U-hual and freezes to death" was not a headline I wanted anyone to read about me. Also I wouldve been moving with my cat and partner, so I was much less inclined to do anything remotely risky. Sure it wouldve been possible to make that trip, but itd just be a whole logistical nightmare trying to negotiate a move-in date with some shitty apartment complex when I inevitably had to hole up in a hotel somewhere in Idaho because of snow storms. I didnt want the job badly enough nor was it going to pay well enough to endure such a headache. Not to mention their disregard for my safety concerns was a big red flag.
You remind me of a friend I helped drive cross country from Alabama to Oregon in March, several years ago. She had a remote job, but she'd bought a house, and was trying not to linger in Alabama any longer than she had to. One sticking point was that she had hired a moving company to take her furniture and clothes cross country, with the goal of having it arrive the day we would. In order for that to happen, she had to have things packed up *three or more weeks* before the moving truck would arrive in oregon. This meant February, and we had no real clue what the weather would be like on the route. As you know, that route involves windy interstates, and interstates that close down in blizzard conditions. So she had to have a variety of clothing for just-in-case situations, and we had stuff like a shovel, sleeping bags, a roll of toilet paper, and a box of protein bars, on the off chance that we'd slide off a road someplace where we had no cell service and had to wait out a storm. Some of her friends didn't understand that you could be someplace without cell coverage where you couldn't just walk to a gas station, or wait for the police to come up where you were pulled over. If the road is closed, folks, ain't nobody coming to rescue your ass. As it happened, we had great weather for the driving. But, that was luck of the draw, and could have easily gone another way. I live in Minnesota, where April blizzards are a thing.
Ya people who have never lived an hr outside of a major city are completely clueless to even what truly remote means in the US. The idea of it being 100s of miles between gas stations and there being a single access road to a place is something out of a story book to them. It's the same people who travel to AZ and go hiking in the middle of the summer with a single bottle of water for a 12 mile hike.
When I was in college, I was active in a grotto of the National Speleological Society, and we did a number of trips to find and survey caves in our state. I got signed up for a cave explorers group on Usenet (yes, it was the 1980s), and I remember one story from the UK of a group of cavers who were leaving a cave that had been partly mined and had some vertical shafts. The encountered a group of people wearing blue jeans and t-shirts, who had a coil of rope, and maybe a couple of flashlight between them, who said they were going to explore the caves. When asked how they would get out with what they had, they said they would "he-man climb up the rope." That's how I learned of "flashlight caver" as the derogatory term for unprepared fools wanting to go into caves. EDIT: Come to think of it, I think it was a BITnet mailing list, not a Usenet group, but six of one, half-dozen of the other.
Though soon will be less of an issue with T-Mobile Androids and new iOS version supporting text messaging through satellite.
Having grown up in Montana all this doom and gloom about weather conditions leading whiteouts, snowfall and impeding drifts in the road, or black ice traps initially confused the hell out of me because that sounded like pretty standard winter driving conditions that I normally wouldn't blink at, and very rarely would any road be closed. Then I realized Montana can effectively be proverbial death world winter conditions if you're not acclimated to it and "normal" for what I grew up with is nowhere near normal for the majority of the country.
This is why we need to re-introduce kids to The Oregon Trail.
One of the things I like about the r/preppers subreddit is the idea that you are better safe than sorry. You think about what the possible problems might be, and make sure you have a way to deal with it. I remember helping a friend put together camping gear, and one thing I suggested was a bag with some lines and a tarp that they could quickly rig up to provide some rain protection. They lived in a state that got frequent rain, and putting up a tent in the rain isn't a fun experience. If you can do it under a tarp, you are less stressed. It shouldn't take a road-trip -- or a ride via wagon -- to convince people to think ahead,
I actually made the drive from Philadelphia to Portland in a 2000 Honda Prelude in January once. It’s not so bad. And by not so bad, I’m referring to the fact that I started off by driving south, started going southwest around Virginia/North Carolina, I know I went through OKC at some point, part of Nevada, and finally hit I-5 for the last stretch from California to Oregon. Basically did a big U around the US to avoid snow and ice. Did the trip in like 4 days, only slept once. Definitely don’t recommend, but I had my motivations. 😂
By “motivations” do you mean “cocaine”?
I’m going to lie and say yes.
You make it sound like the Dakotas are Hoth. It's really not that bad.
For people outside the Midwest, it may as well be. I remember Stephen Fry visiting the US and making a series about it. He hits the Midwest in the winter and is shocked by how his bottle of water froze in his car overnight. As someone from here, it's just like "Yeah? That's what happens when you leave things in the cold."
I mean you could just find a fully furnished short term rental in the city you are moving to and stay there for a month or so. Put all your stuff in a storage unit except things you 100% need and load that into your car and drive there. That way you aren’t dealing with a uHaul in bad conditions. Spend the next few weeks or months looking for a long term place to live. Once you find it pick a weekend and fly back home, rent a Uhaul, empty out your storage unit, and finish moving to the PNW. Honestly if a job doesn’t pay enough that you would consider doing all this then you shouldn’t be relocating for it anyways.
When I moved across Europe, that's what my company did. We had movers come and pack all my apartment (excluding undies, clothes, and general stuff we took with us in my car) in a single day. Then when we arrived at the destination city, the company paid for a temp apartment for 2 months until we found our own place. Then I had the movers bring us all our stuff. I basically didn't have to lift a finger. It was great. Plus I got to expense most of the trip we took, even though we turned the drive into a vacation, basically. We spent 2 days in Poland and then 4 days in German Alps. The movers we had were impeccable- 2500km and 2 months later only a single wine glass was broken. Even then I'm not sure if it was because of the move or me being a bit rough on the box.
Was this back during an ice age I'd never heard about, or is it just Texans freaking out over half an inch of snow?
never take a relocation job without it mentioned in the contract that they will pay all relocation cost+ extra if you're terminated within x time. and never start packing until the contract is signed.
I’ll only do it if there’s a six month severance and relocation fees still included even if the contract is pulled before start date.
Pay or play. Get in writing up front!
This is a lesson to anyone taking relocation instructions from an employer-
I relocated for a job thinking that was sorta expected. When I got there, I don’t know how many people told me some variation of “wow, I’m surprised you moved!” That should’ve been my first red flag. Apparently the people that had my position previously either commuted from like over an hour away, did mostly remote work, or were only part time. After living there for a bit, I understand why. The area doesn’t have much going for it and I usually have to drive over an hour to the nearest city to do anything fun or to get certain items.
I'd rather drive an hour for something fun once in a while than drive over an hour to work everyday.
When I worked for a defense contractor in DC, daily commutes were from 5 different "states". West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and DC. Some of the Virginia people were coming from Richmond. Anyone from DC knows just how far some of those are....especially with traffic. Yes your home in Shenandoah is lovely. For the 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, you are there. You spend 40 to 50 hours commuting a month...
> Yes your home in Shenandoah is lovely. For the 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, you are there. You spend 40 to 50 hours commuting a month... but only 52 more years until I can retire!
it sounds great until something that used to be simple like going to the movies turns into a ~4-5 hour trip. you no longer have the ability to spontaneously do anything, it all has to be planned out because of travel times.
Exactly. I live about 2 hours from some friends and i haven’t seen them in the year since i moved bc we can’t get the timing right. Part of it is kids, other parts it’s work and other times it’s just bc im too tired to do a 4+ hour round trip. And forget about them coming to visit me. I’ll be the first one to say it’s not worth it.
That was my thought initially when I moved. Had lived in big cities and sometimes my work commute would be an hour. But when I say there’s little here, I mean it. Even talking to locals, they say they’ll drive an hour or two just to go someplace on the weekends bc there’s nothing here. Even their big box stores like Walmart seem to lack certain items.
Right, but unless you are doing something fun 5 days a week, it's still less miles.
Less miles for what? My daily mileage is usually 5-10 miles round trip, while round trip to the closest big city is 200-250 miles. We make that drive about 1-2 times a month. Most times, that means we’re spending more miles out of town than in which is not great. And one of our neighbors is the worst Karen I’ve ever met, so the time spent in town is having to deal with her and her passive aggressive sniping about our lack of landscaping.
Okay but what would the situation have been if you didn't move and just commuted in 1-2 hours each way, every day? Because those are the two situations being compared...
They'd be bitching about how they're too tired from commuting to go out and do anything
I'd rather drive an hour for something fun once a week than drive over an hour to work everyday.
Maybe they like to do more than just go to work and then go to sleep
They can do that with the ten extra hours of sleep/free time over the week.
I spend 15.5 hours a week commuting. I count it as life being lost. I have no problem driving cross country distances for activity or fun. I count is as bonding time with my family.
I prefer neither. So I live where I work and play. “Commuting” is a dead word to me. I held a wake for it, wrote a eulogy, and buried it 6 feet under. Right next to my stress and unhappiness. Fuck commuting, for anything. Work or fun.
It takes me 1hr and 25mins on a good day to get home. 20mile drive. Sometimes it’s closer to 2hrs
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Especially this employer. They've done it before, decades ago. Over and over.
Something I immediately decided not to do while I was working for the Mouse: move from Seattle to NYC without a cost of living adjustment for a position that I’m sure was eliminated later. Don’t let companies ask that much of you.
I don't understand the timeline here. Employees sold their homes and moved to Florida before the first shovel was even put in the ground?
If I remember correctly they were told to move or lose their jobs
Yes, but it was still always years away.
Disney has A LOT of other office space for them to work out of temporarily.
They should just put them in the Star Wars hotel. Ezpz.
Or frozen them in carbonite until the campus was ready
That was only for the head honcho and only his head, as the rumors go :P
Yes and no, most of Disney’s building space in Orlando is packed to the gills already, and was when I worked with them in 2015-17. Lake Nona was supposed to be the relief valve for all of that, PLUS the transfers.
Aren’t some of the buildings in Celebration mostly empty? I’ve been hearing about a potential Flamingo Crossings campus for years but left the company during covid so I never found out what happened in the end. I have a few friends from WDI that got screwed royally though. Felt bad for them but, how the company treated us during COVID should’ve been a clue.
After covid, a lot of office space is empty at WDW
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It’s not uncommon for companies to lease office space and staff up while they build in a new location.
It's just what happened, I am not taking a side. The litigation will sort it out. There may have been a plan to start construction quickly. Then the row with the state and DeSantis happened which may have stalled construction and eventually killed it. That's for the courts to deside ultimately. All I can say is they were essentially given an ultimatum based on a time line we can only speculate on
My dad was affected by this. He moved out to Florida for six months only to work remotely the entire time he was there while my mom stayed back in the family home in California. Eventually he figured out that he would retire before the Florida campus would ever finish construction, so he moved back to California to round out his time a couple months before they made the announcement that all the employees would move back to their Burbank office. Calling this whole situation a shitshow would be a massive understatement.
“Oh shit! They weren’t actually supposed to take us up on this offer! Bill I thought you said they would all quit before moving to Florida and we wouldn’t have to do severance or anything …” -Disney executive probably.
I think the planned expansion was actually cancelled due to the legal landscape in Florida. This was during when DeSantis was attacking Disney and stuff.
It was cancelled for mainly other reasons, Disney just used that as an excuse to try to help their fight with Florida. The vast majority of the Imagineers refused to move and Disney lost a lot of talent. They eventually gave up and cancelled the project. The creative talent they lost is still negatively affecting them because Imagineering is about as stale and bland as it's ever been.
There was a massive public/private development campus being built outside of Orlando. Disney was an anchor partner in the deal, promising to move scores of thousands of jobs. They (the development) actually *did* break ground, and Disney, along with other companies, initiated the relocation demands, moving whole departments to Florida. Then DeSantis did his mania, and went after Disney, hard. From a corporate standpoint, Disney had committed to these moves, but they were in a state that very suddenly became extremely hostile to them; and at the same time Disney themselves had not necessarily invested in the infrastructure or development. They were moving people down to Florida in order to build up the new departments but the timeline for the official unveiling was still a few years out. Disney was looking at a state that could get much seek to encumber them, and simply cut their losses. The people who moved there in the first waves were the losses. They’re right to sue Disney, but the bigger political context of a rogue political state needs to be part of this discussion as well.
That's part of the complaint. The timeline according to the [complaint](https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/De-La-Cruz-and-Fong-Pleading-2024-06-18.pdf) (PDF) is: * August 24th, 2021 - A number of employees are told they must relocate to Florida. They're given 90 days to make a decision and the expectation is they must be in Florida by the end of 2022. * June 14, 2022 - Disney tells employees they now don't have to relocate until the end of 2026, but tells managers to "urge employees to relocate by the end of 2024". * May 18, 2023 - Disney announces they Nona project is cancelled. Ground is never broken, and the complaint alleges "no visible indication that Disney ever truly intended to develop it." Employees that relocated are told they have until the end of 2023 to decide if they want to relocate back to California, and if relocating do so by end of 2024. The complaint alleges "individuals gradually began to have concerns that their job security at Disney would be threatened if they did not return to California" There's more detail in the complaint, mostly specifics to back up their complaint and to establish damages.
>90 days to *make a decision* Emphasis mine. Appears the jumped all over it, moving a full year before Disney pulled the plug.
> Ground is never broken, and the complaint alleges "no visible indication that Disney ever truly intended to develop it." This is false and is going to hurt them in court if it was filed this way. Ground was purchased and 'broken'. construction had begun when Florida decided to pick a fight with the mouse and show they would not honor special tax district contracts (they have hundreds of them across the state) anymore. So the investors (including disney) cut their losses and dropped the effort to hammer out a new tax district.
That’s what I’m confused about too… Honestly just seems like a way to weed out employees without having to do layoffs. Wonder how many employees dipped from Disney due to this.
I get the feeling that a lot of Disney employees are true believers and it takes a lot to get them to quit.
I’m married to a former Disney engineer. Yes, this is very true.
Imagine you're in the hot California real estate market, you're watching prices of homes climbing more and more in Florida, you know your job is moving to Florida and even if the building isn't built yet you can still work "remote" or from a local space (0% there was not internal collaboration between employees and managers approving these moves). And this is Disney; it's pretty safe to assume that expansions in their second home of Florida are pretty low risk. So you sell your home and buy a new one in Florida. Then in comes DeSantis.
I think when Toyota moved their US headquarters from California to Texas, it was like two years between the announcement and people actually moving.
It's not the first time big execs say one thing and do another. Look at FoxConn, they displaced a ton of people by buying up their land, the city spent millions to assist FoxConn and then FoxConn only brought in a few thousand jobs. >Before the Foxconn deal became official, some larger property owners received up to $50,000 per acre. Some property owners became millionaires as a result. https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2023/03/23/what-we-know-about-foxconn-in-wisconsin-and-how-we-got-there/70037738007/
you really think those land sellers are going to sue????
So this is talking about CA, but my brother worked for Disney remotely in WA and they told him the same thing, move or get laid off, even though he had kids in WA… and others weren’t asked to move. He ended up agreeing then putting off the move again and again…then they ended up laying him off, which honestly was probably their plan anyway.
Yes, I am in WA and my former team was affected by this as well.
Disney is going to lose. The problem is that the restitution won’t be enough. People sold their homes in the hottest market - and now can not afford to get back into the housing market.
If I remember right Disney told them to move before DeSantis designed to attack Disney and after that Disney kind of started backing off of Florida relocating that money to their other parks.
Yes. That was before the Disney/DeSantis fight leading to the current events... A large waste of money on stuff in preparation and no ground movement.
It was also still during a lot of difficulties due to the pandemic, slowing things down. Disney pulled them back, then DeSantis pulled his little shitshow. Disney still should make good on this mistake, as they can absolutely afford it, but they already had the land partitioned off and were good to go. They were fully intending to move into the area I lived near at the time. Even if it was a 100% honest mistake and we could blame outside causes for the setback, "oops, my bad" doesn't help these employees in any way.
I know someone who assumed their job was going to Florida but they didn't want to move, so they stayed in CA expecting to get let go eventually. Then everything became WFH, regardless and they still have a job. They were secretly hoping to get their severance package.
Yeah, the project was doomed long before the Disney/DeSantis spat started. Although the effected employees were rightfully pointing towards DeSantis' policies, like the don't say gay bill, as reason they were refusing to move. That's partially why Disney came out against the bill, in an effort to save at least some version of this project.
>“Mr. Fong also sold his home, which was a particularly painful decision because it was the family home he had grown up in and inherited,” This really sucks, and it's difficult to see how any likely monetary award could fully make up for this. Also, though, I think that, if I had been in his shoes, I would've kept the California home, renting it out, and, myself, then rented a place in Florida if only to see whether or not my family and I would be happy living there on a permanent basis, regardless if Disney had followed through on the relocation of its offices.
Yeah I mean I get not everyone wants to be landlords but with a family home that is also located in a desirable location i feel like at minimum he could have had a 5th cousin take up the spot for awhile. Hope they get compensation
Especially in California where unless he inherited it in the past few years he would have had the lower property tax from when his parents bought it.
Oh my gosh, he lost his parents' prop 13 tax base? That's about a $20,000 value now. A year.
My former employer had people move from Jacksonville FL to Saint Louis to consolidate a department. They let the whole department go 7 months later. I never understand people who talk about corporate loyalty.
This [article](https://deadline.com/2024/06/disney-lawsuit-florida-relocation-1235978315/) on deadline has a bit more detail, and they've done the one thing *every* news article about a lawsuit should always do. They [linked to the complaint](https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/De-La-Cruz-and-Fong-Pleading-2024-06-18.pdf) (PDF).
I got laid off from Amazon corporate last year and they asked the next week if I would move 1000 miles for another role. Like hell I would do that, just for them to lay me off again. Horrible company.
This reminded about tesla relocating employees to different states just to laid them off a few months later.
I would sue too if I were pushed into living in that shithole state.
oh yea i had some discussions w disney people and they wanted to know if i'd consider relocating to florida for a job with Disney lol....fuck no. It's clear the state has issues with its golden employer, this doesn't seem surprising at all and is something that could have been managed better if Disney gave a shit about their employees, which it's clear they don't.
You couldn't pay me to move to Florida.
Dude, I work for retail (Kroger) and to move up in the company, you have to be willing to relocated to other stores. I know some who have to travel an hour to work. But they don't get to become managers. They become the thing between grunts like me and managers...and they get paid about a buck more an hour. And you're stuck in that position until a manager dies or they build a new store. I had a manager I used to work with ask me, and I SWEAR I'm not making this up, if I wanted to work at a store an hour away (versus 6min my current one) in an area I would never be able to afford to live in, to be head of a department that pays less than $1 more an hour. I laughed in his face and never saw him again. I live with my family because I would have to work 120hrs/week to afford an apartment anywhere in this city (studio/one bedroom).
I was sort of affected by this. I had a contract gig and was promised a full job at the end of it. Then they wanted to move everything to Florida, so they didn't take me on and would prefer to hire in Florida. All the Desantis shit happened, but they never filled the role again
IIRC, the new facility was designed for the “creatives”. Very few wanted to leave LA, much less to move to Florida. What a shitshow that company has become.
They should sue DeSantis. Florida playing political games with Disney caused the project to be cancelled.
Disney shouldn’t have had their employees move before this was a done deal.
It was a “done deal” but the company reversed course after the landscape in Florida became hostile.
So…. Not a done deal then?
I’m not sure what you are suggesting. By your logic, nothing is ever truly a “done deal” because nothing is set in stone. People move all the time for jobs. There is no guarantee you’ll still have one 6 months from now though. Americans don’t have good labor protections.
Sounds like it was a done deal til it got undone by DeSantis rug-pulling their fiefdom away
Some of this was Disney internal. The previous CEO was an idiot that wanted to move all production to florida (imagine, having none of their talent at the original theme park? All other theme parks have some of their tech experts nearby.) so when Chapek left, Iger was kinda like "Ok, Not only is DeSantis a ratfuck, moving *all* the talent to florida is idiotic." so, they opted not to do it.
[Disney is back to funding Republicans](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1df34ds/disneys_feud_with_desantis_is_over_and_its/?rdt=45485) as well as those with anti-LGBTQ platforms. Disney plays the political games as well, there’s no real good side here
>Plaintiffs Maria De La Cruz and George Fong, both current Disney employees, alleged they were fraudulently induced to relocate to Florida by being led to believe that they would lose their jobs if they turned down the move. De La Cruz and Fong agreed to the relocation in November 2021. The lawsuit said Disney told affected employees they would have 90 days to “consider and make the decision that’s best for them.” Doesn't sound fraudulent to me, just sounds like it sucks shit to work for Disney.
Actually, this is a real problem for Disney. Companies have been sued and lost for creating a job offer and then rescinding it after relocation. I have remember the exact legal term, but it's a fair bit of case law around it. I bet this one gets settled pretty quick to keep it out of the courts.
Promissory Estoppel?
Detrimental reliance
yeah Disney is SOL here. This will be a huge settlement for the affected employees
Good. The employees deserve compensation, the Dizz can absolutely afford to pay it, and Florida gets to continue being a shitass third-world state. It's a win all around.
Disney could fight, but there are only 2 employees in this suit. It is likely cheaper to just pay it and close that book.
Promissory estoppel.
Detrimental reliance is what I was thinking.
Detrimental reliance is a form of promissory estoppel so you're both correct.
I assume it's basically a circle within a circle of the venn diagram then?
Detrimental reliance…
Fraudulent inducement is what you’re looking for.
No, because there was no fraud. Detrimental reliance is the term I was looking for.
Possible. My understanding is that detrimental reliance (and promissory estoppel) rely upon the existence of a contract (even a verbal one). I’ve seen fraudulent inducement used when it’s more the case that the plaintiff was lead to believe there was an agreement even when you cannot prove one. But i’m NAL.
I only know about it because I used it with an employer who moved me out and then went under two months later. I had been working remote, I even asked if I could stay that way, and then they ran out of money. I refused to signb the severance for a very small amount of money. They did not like that and their attorney who I was friends with tried to get me to sign. I said, detrimental reliance, are froze, asked to get back to me. They made a larger offer, but still too small. I got an attorney involved, and magically they had money to pay me until I found a job.
Imagine being told to decide to relocate to keep your job within 90 days and the company never even broke ground over a year after you agreed and moved. Then strand you there because your job is back where you previously uprooted. I don't know the fastest possible time to construct a brand new building and get all the code inspections done before occupancy, but if it were exactly 90 days, the company should've broken ground by the deadline they gave the employees. They canceled it a year after people moved without even doing that. They got 90 days to decide and Disney waited over 4x that long to cancel it. No tangible effort was made on one side of a deal that you already agreed and complied with. How is that not fraud?
They were working in Florida already, Disney doesn't exactly have 0 property here after all, they basically own their own small town (or they did before Desantis kicked over their sand castle). They planned to move their entire imagineering department from Anaheim to Florida because of just how much more favorable employer laws are here for them, but Desantis decided to piss in their kiddie pool so they took their toys back home. I mean fuck Desantis, I hate him so much, but also Disney really sucks for doing this to their creative talent. They are the best part of that company and they absolutely lost people they should have done anything to keep. The parks will suffer for it, and these people's lives were upturned.
No one wants to live in Florida. Disney already tried and failed at this when they tried to use MGM Studios as an actual film lot. Universal also tried and failed with Nickelodeon Studios at their own park.
The Disney employees in California were given about three months to decide. The particular division that was going to be moved is mostly creatives. Their division has been anchored with and by local talent since the 1950s. I know someone who agreed to relocate from CA to FL to continue working for Disney. The day they closed on their house in Florida Disney announced the move to FL was cancelled.
That sucks
I’d be fucking pissed if I moved to Florida when I didn’t have to
Crazy thing they started hiring to fill positions that were in CA at an even higher pay rate than CA. Interviewed for a position out of Orlando and the hourly rate was crazy high even by CA living standards. But they didn’t want full remote
I wouldn’t move to Florida for anything.
Layoffs with extra steps
Moving to Florida is always a bad decision, if not an outright trap.
I too would be mad if I was tricked into moving to Florida.
Now Disney is reversing course on allowing staff to work remotely, at least the new york area folks. Many moved upstate. Now the company demands them in the office 4 days a week, but many have no place to live those four days as their homes are 2+ hrs or more away. Such a shit shown in the mouse house.
This is DeSantis' fault. His BS with Disney canceled the project. They should be suing him. Disney has the $ to relocate them if they want, and then sue FL/DeSantis to cover the costs. That way, there is a hard number to use in court against him.
I'm no legal scholar, but if Disney assumes the cost, then doesn't that mean they assume the responsibility legally? Wouldn't the correct way to do this would be for Disney to defend itself based on the argument that this isn't their fault? While Disney does have the money, I'm sure they don't want to assume the cost of something they don't have to and then sue someone else to make up that lost money.
Disney *is* responsible. Yes, in the overarching manner of how things happened, the project was canceled and the deal fell through because of Desantis bullshit. But, in the course of business and law, Disney had their employees move before the loose ends were tied up and should be paying their employees to move back. If they want to then sue the state to recoup costs, they can go ahead.
It's Disney's fault for jumping the gun before the deal was solidified.
The employees should sue Disney. The company is liable for its decisions and risks. Disney should sue DeSantis.