Oh, and I don’t know if y’all down in L.A. have started using craigslist yet, as it has been mostly a bay area phenomenon. It’s starting to expand to serve other cities, and it’s a trustworthy job search engine. They have one for Seattle now:
Tell her not to do it!!! Santa’s a slave driver!!!
Seriously, sounds like a particularly nasty top management botch made by imbeciles who do not have a clue. If you are worth your salt you will find something else. But nasty nonetheless.
All the best, Johnny. Sorry to hear of this happening to you. 
Best of luck, Johnny…my own involuntary vacation is just wrapping up now.
I hope you find something soon Johnny L.A.
I feel for you, Johnny. The job market around here (southeast Michigan) is still pretty dead. I’ve been trying to find a better job, but noone is hiring. And I don’t have a lot of experience yet, so if I lost my job it would take me quite a while to find another one. Good luck, man.
You shouldn’t have worn that suit I guess.
Sorry you got laid off but I can guess their plan. Hire temps who don’t get benifits and half of the hourly wage of real emplyees. Sure they won’t be as skilled as monkeys but we’re not trying to write Shakespeare here.
That sucks Johnny. I got laid off in January and had to kick around until I got a job in April and it sucked hard.
I had a little schadenfreud moment when my former bosses started calling me and offering me lunch if I would walk them through some of the processes I used to handle. Wtf.
If it helps, I’m ten times happier in my job now then I was in January…it seems every laid off person I know is much happier in their employment now.
Best of luck Johonny, I’m sending some good wishes your direction.
Boy, some help I am, I can’t even send wishes to the correct name.
Redirecting good vibes to Johnny L.A.
I got this in an e-mail yesterday from our Admin who quit last week:
Notice I said the Admin quit? She is a true Administrative Professional. She belongs to a professional administrative assistants association, she has been certified as a “master admin” (or whatever the certification is called), and she does excellent work. Three weeks ago she was doing something on her work computer that was related to her professional association. Sure, it wasn’t company work directly; but this task she was doing would benefit the company because it made her an even better Admin than she was already. So it did benfit the company indirectly. The new VP saw her and told her to do it on her own time. It’s not as if she was shirking her duties. She was doing something that improves her professional abilities (which are, after all, directly related to her job) when she had a little time. This is not how one treats a professional! So she gave notice and quit last Friday. Now her husband is “bringing home the bacon” and she is doing volunteer work with the blind.
Here is another example of the VP’s personality (albeit third-hand). There were workers on the floor (but not in our offices) who were fixing the building’s ventilation system. As the VP passed by some of them, “P” heard her mutter, “I’m surrounded by laymen!” (Maybe “P” misheard – and she does confuse words sometimes. “Laymen” isn’t quite the right word. “Labourers” might be more appropriate. But in any case…) So obviously the VP feels she is better than people who work with their hands. (Incidentally, “P”'s husband is a plumber.) She also seems to think she is a superior person to the people who work for her. Now, I’m not a psychologist; but it seems to me that she has a “power trip”. IMO she is an insecure person who must bully others to convince herself that she is “better” than they are.
Actually, the job requires technical abilities. Jobs fail all the time. Why? Is it the JCL that has always worked before, but is ABEND-ing now? Is it the data? The medium? Or: The job didn’t fail, but the results (if you know what to look for) are not what you expect. Why? Different format? Who fixes it? You? A programmer? The customer? (In the environment where these purported replacements are coming from, they have rigid rules for accepting data. If it’s not just as they say it has to be, then it’s the customer’s problem.) And there are “tricks” the Data Management Analyst has to know. Half of the jobs don’t care how the record length and blocksize of a DASD dataset is specified in our CICS. Half of the jobs require them to be exact. Generic Reformat is a convenient tool, but it doesn’t do all that we need it to. Sometimes it needs an Easytrieve to run before it, and other times it needs an Easytrieve to run behind it. And in the latter case, it also has to have an Easytrieve to run before it. And so on, and so forth. Now there is only one person who knows these “tricks”; and even she had to ask me about them since there are so many of them and I had the most experience with them.
So these replacements will be coming from an environment where the data is in one format to an environment where many of our thousands of data contributors have their own formats. There’s a pretty decent learning curve there.
And while they’re learning, the data will be stacking up. Less data will be reformatted, validated and analysed. Less data will go into the database. Our (sorry, “their”) data will suffer.
I talked to “J” yesterday after work. (I have her home number.) She says she thinks that she will be kept on long enough to train the replacements, and then they’ll get rid of her. She says we eight are the lucky ones, as she is afraid that instead of being laid off they’ll find some pretext to fire her so they don’t have to give her a severence package. (One week’s pay for ever completed year of service. In her case, almost six months’ pay.) Good news for her, she has a sister on Camano Island, WA and would like to move up there. Bad news for her, her b/f didn’t like their recent trip. I think it might just be that they spent four days cooped up in a car as they took the coast road up, and then the poor guy was in a house full of wimmins. He liked Seattle, though. I say, drag the guy up! He’ll learn to love it!)
“D” told her that if she is still employed next summer, she will quit. As I mentioned, she has an opportunity in Tennessee that may result in her inheriting a house. They want her now, but she’s hoping she can put it off until Spring.
“P” has an inflated opinion of her own abilities. She’s the one who was brown-nosing over the past couple of months. She’s discovered recently, however, that management no longer want to talk to her. It will be interesting to see how she holds up. She may have talked me out of my job and saved her own; but I know everything she does, and more. And unlike her, I have no trouble contacting the customers.
Interesting coincidence. My final paycheques were dated last Friday. Incidentally, I have to sign an agreement not to sue the company before they’ll give me my nine weeks’ severence pay.
Well, the thing is that this is giving me a much-needed boot in the arse to get me up to Washington. 
I love it up there. I like the cold, and I like the wet. And I especially like the green and the fresh seafood! (Erm… but not the green on the seafood! 
)
The only thing I’m really stressing about is the house. If this queers the deal, I’ll be very disappointed. So will my friend who is selling it to me. On the other hand, I’ll have about $25,000 in the bank that I would have spent on the downpayment, that I can use to live on up there (in addition to the other money in the bank). But I still want the house!
(Have I said all that already? I didn’t check.)
Thanks, everyone, for the well-wishes. “In the best of all possible worlds, everything works out for the best.” Coulda used better timing though. Just two more weeks…
This just in:
I talked to my old boss (the one who was offered a lower position, or resignation; he chose the latter). He’s now a Director in another company. He said there is a remote possibility that he might have a position that could be worked from a remote location – like northern Washington!
There is no job at the moment. And please note the words “remote” and “might” in the last paragraph. But this is a guy who knows my work, and he knows I do a good job. He also knows that I enjoy researhing online (which is what the position would entail). He said that the problem with telecommuting in my ex-position was that he had no way of monitoring my performance. Now he does.
So there’s a bagful of “mights and maybes”, and the possibility is “remote”. But at least he’s thinking of me, and likes the job I did for him well enough to contact me.
He told me to keep in touch and to contact him after I move.
Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease…
Good luck and good thoughts heading your way!
{{{ Johnny }}}
Kathy & Ric
You have my best wishes and all the good vibes I can muster!
Dude!
You lucky bastard! Just think of all the free time you now have to buzz around on the new R1!
Come on up to Tahoe and I’ll dust off one of the RZs and I’ll show you a few nice roads! When the sun goes down, its Bar-B-Que and homebrew!
Good luck!
Sorry to hear about your loss. I send many hugs. I also envy you cause I currently hate the commute time to my job 4hrs r/t and a layoff would give me more time to look. GOOD LUCK SWEETIE.
Please refer to suit thread for proper condolences.
Four hours r/t! I thought I had it bad! My office was 43 miles away in L.A. traffic. If I was on four wheels it would take at least an hour each way. If there was a collision or if it was raining, it would take 1-1/2 or even two hours each way. (On the bike it takes about 45 minutes. But then, I ride fast and we can lane-split here. 
)
Think of it this way now you have all this time to do stuff you’ve been putting off because of work. BTW there’s a very good chance I’ll be in San Francisco over Christmas/ New Year holidays
to visit my sister and her SO. Maybe we can hook up so I can delive some warm homemade x-mas cookies.
Hey anyone looking for work in the NYC area, I know a "friend of the family” who has a “rug removal” business. If you are at all interested, He can be found in the bowery around 3am. Just ask around for Johnny Whispers.