You may be bored of the pandemic but it is not bored of you

Very aggressive furloughs have arrived for faculty and staff at the University of Arizona. In addition to their serverity, these have a rather obvious design flaw, in the sense that during the period of the reduction, someone whose salary is usually $201,000 will make less than someone whose salary is usually $199,000. Perhaps a good general rule would be to have at least one numerate person in the upper echelons of the administration at each university.

Furloughs are almost surely in the future at Wisconsin as well, though I expect less dramatic than the ones at Arizona. They have already hit the staff of the system's central office.

I experienced furlough days my first year at Western Ontario, where they were caused "Rae Days" after the province's goofy NDP premier Bob Rae. As the rather embarrassed department chair explained them to me, my thought was that, as a politician, you really do not want to have mandatory days off without pay named after you.