Its Saturday morning. I “volunteered” for a weekend on-call-duty and so I sit at work hitting the ‘F10′ key debugging the emailjobs process. I suppose its only natural then to get this story out since I am now at the scene of the crime.
Blog shimmers and fades dramatically in typical flashback fashion.
I turned into the parking lot at about 10 past 9 in the morning. I was a little late. I normally get in at right around 9 AM but took an extra ten minutes this morning as I was coming from Huggy’s place instead of my own. Yeah, yeah… unfortunately I hadn’t spent the night at Huggy’s for any “good” reasons. I stayed over her place the night before because I had a wicked stomach bug and couldn’t even sleep through the stomach cramps beseiging me (kudos to you women who can make it through a night of menstrual cramps… I would curl up and die every month).
As I walked through the double doors and into the company foyer a lady rushes by me in tears. I shrug and guessed she was having a bad day before continuing on, pausing only to whisk my ID badge out of my pocket so I could scan it at the secured door. Then it started.
“THIS IS SOME BULLSHIT!”
It came from Eric, another IT guy I would talk to while we worked out in the gym. He seemed a bit upset.
“Hey Eric. What’s going on man?” I asked casually, but really meaning “What the fuck?! You can’t scream out profanity like that here?!”
“Well they just let go 300 people in IT! Gary is gone… Dianne… Allison… Maybe me… I can’t deal with this man!”
Eric wasn’t one of those guys who played tactless, over-the-top practical jokes, but I still expected him to break into a smile and tell me he was just playing around. Instead he just shook his head, scanned his card and walked through the door. I was about to follow right behind him. Then I saw the security guards and my brain finally processed it: People were being fired. I might be one of them. Maybe my ID was no longer working. Maybe.
I scanned it and watched the familiar LED flash green. Well my badge was still working at least. That was a good sign. I walked to my cubicle ignoring the sullen looks from other IT members as I passed. A group of some of my teammates were huddled together. Others just sat quietly at their desk clearly pretending to work.
“So… should I even bother logging in?” I asked with a nervous smile on my face.
Chuck, the team lead, looked at me and shrugged.
“There’s no real warning. They’re just tapping people on the shoulder and escorting them out.”
Maybe I was safe. Or maybe they hadn’t gotten to my name on the list yet. Then my “worry free”, failsafe kicked in… so what if I got laid off. Thats just vacation time for me. Its not like I have to return to a war-stricken bosnia or anything. I would either get another job somewhere else or go back to Jamaica. No kids. No wife. No mortgage. It would be disappointing, but not the end of the world. I smiled and logged in already feeling better no matter the outcome.
The next hour or so was hard. Saying good byes to people I had worked with a long time. Giving them a hug or shaking their hands and wishing them well. Sometimes wishing it was me instead of them. A lay off would do me minimal harm… but some people had kids and families and mortgages and single income homes. You could see the weight of that burden suddenly show on their faces. Jason, one of my co-workers learned he was let go when his badge didn’t work. He came in to tell us bye and get his severance package.
“Its a wake up call… guess its just time to move on… not sure what I am going to do but I will get something… I will be all right.” He reassured us and himself. And as resourceful as I knew him to be I wasn’t worried at all.
But others weren’t so lucky. It was just coincedence that I had lunch with a guy who I had worked with sometime back in Cleveland the day before. He was here in Colorado to get training for his new position and had mentioned that the entire reason he was staying with the company was because it was so stable and he had to support a stay-at-home wife and kids. When I learned that he had been let go earlier in the morning my heart sank. Imagine being fired and not being able to even go home… maybe I jinxed him.
When it was all done my manager got us all together for some damage control and assured us the cuts were over with. He then scheduled times for our performance/salary evaluations later on in the day. Its a cruel irony that on the day 10% of IT got fired many of us also got promotions and/or raises. Talk about bitter sweet.
Posted in Colorado, FlashBacks, Work
