4 Nov
2022
4 Nov
'22
11:53 p.m.
On Oct 31, 2022, at 4:31 PM, Rich Alderson via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
Tour guides and front desk personnel were immediately let go, because it was
clear that it would be several months, up to a year, before we could open
again.
Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook etc. were willing to pay all of the ancillary on-site
staff (like the people work at their coffee bars) their regular wages through the pandemic
even when nobody was allowed in the offices.
LCM+L, being owned by a billionaire's foundation, could have chosen to do that too.
Professional museum staff (curator, educational
coordinator, etc.) were
retained for a short while, to wind things down.
They and the entire engineering staff should have been kept on until the museum could
reopen, doing whatever work they could remotely, and should still be working there now.
That they weren't shows how little the foundation cares for the things Paul Allen
cared about.
While I prefer the way LCM+L made working systems available to the public over the
CHM's mostly-static "behind a velvet rope" approach, CHM has turned out to
be the better institution since they at least kept people on.
All of the engineers, which the exception of the
manager of the department,
were laid off as of 1 July 2020. None of us was allowed to return to the
museum at any future time, and no one associated with the mothballed museum was
allowed to talk to any of us.
Disgusting. Good luck to LCM+L hiring anyone with real skills for passion rates if they
ever actually do try to reopen.
-- Chris