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You might hate your job, but you've got it better than the office plants at AOL's former headquarters in Dulles. A tipster writes:

I work for AOL in Dulles. AOL celebrated the start of the new year by cutting the budget for watering all the indoor office plants all over Dulles. We came in to find "adopt a plant" posters hung up in the common areas with a corny rhyme about not letting the plants die. Now they're starting to wilt and go black, leaning helplessly against nearby walls or concrete pillars. It's pathetic. Some people inquired about taking them home (there are nice established ficus trees and palms etc.) and were told to either water them, or let them die, at which point they would be removed. I hate symbolism at work.

Another tipster tells us that a "friend of mine who worked at Lexmark said that they fired their janitorial staff. Told employees to take out the trash. Now instead of paying someone $5 an hour to do it, they were paying him $30 an hour." Excellent cost-saving measures all around.

(Photo by brionv)