Office layoff rumor mill part deux

The BBQ Pit
1

Here we go again. It always starts on the Wednesday of “the week” - “the week” being the week of the Friday when the axe is going to fall. This is getting ridiculous.

I am now deflecting all bullshit I hear (even if it will turn out to be not bullshit).

The cast of characters:

Me (of course). Can be paranoid, but am beyond that now.

Co-worker #1, hereby known as CW #1. Not really paranoid, but intent on any gossip she can get.

Co-worker #2, hereby known as CW #2. Cool, doesn’t really care, but has the inside scoop (we’ll see why later).
CW #2 has a cousin who works in Accounting, and therefore she gets wind of things before anyone else does. Apparently the comptroller of my company sent out a memo for a big meeting of “important people” or whatever on Monday. Both CW #2 and her cousin have seen this happen before. It’s a sort of debriefing on the Monday after the Friday when people have been laid off.

I come back to my desk and CWs #1 and #2 are whispering intently. CW #1 (gossip queen) looks up at me briefly. I sit down and try to eavesdrop on the conversation.

CW #3 comes back to his desk and joins in on the conversation.

Finally, I get fed up, and in an unprecedented move, I wheel my chair in and say, “OK, I want to be in on this.” So I hear the story.

Oh, whatever. What the fuck is this kind of crap. I let it get to me last week, and I’ve let it get to me before. Fuck that. As far as I’m concerned, I’m still being paid to do my job, so I’m going to do it.

And were I to be laid off for whatever reason, I’ve realized in the past week that it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I’ve got a ton of experience in this field and in graphic design. I’m marketable. In fact, in all of my adult life (actually, even before then), I’ve never been out of work, unless it was by choice.

It just bugs the FUCK out of me that CW #1 gets all excited and dramatic whenever there’s any kind of rumor. Everything we heard in the past two weeks as being the gospel truth about what would happen last week or whenever has turned out to be complete bullshit.

I have better things to do than deal with bullshit at work. I’m not even going to rationalize and say, well, I have several exclusive niches at work, so they can’t afford to lose me. I don’t fucking care anymore. Of course, I want to keep my job. But I’m not going to spend every fucking Wednesday and Thursday worrying about what might happen on Friday.

I’m going to keep this thread alive every week as the new and improved (ha!) rumors come in.

  • s.e.
2

Unfortunately, some people feed on rumors and embellish them. I’m not sure it’s entirely healthy to spend lots of time worrying about whether you’ll get laid off or not… it’s a good thing you’ve decided (more or less) not to let it bother you. You’ve realized you have lots of marketable skills; should you need to use them as leverage in getting a new job in future, they won’t hurt you.

Please keep us updated, Scott.

F_X

3

Call me paranoid, but…

The three latest rumors, for once, converge, and point to the axe falling tomorrow.

I’ve packed up things that I wouldn’t want to have to pack up under the watchful eye of the big boss or security: my mini disco balls and a couple of other faggy adornments I had up in my cube, my string of Christmas lights (you should have seen how gaudy my cube was last Christmas! :eek: ), two newspaper articles about a guy I went out with that I should have taken down long ago anyway… I guess I can leave the rainbow Slinky and finger puppet.

Ugh.

I don’t worry about getting another job. It’s just the “walk of shame” when you’re escorted out.

I’ll know tomorrow… sigh

4

Scott

Maybe you should start getting resume out there now. Even if there aren’t layoffs this week, it sounds like the stress of maybe losing your job each Friday is getting to you. Why give yourself an ulcer? It sounds like you should no trouble getting another job. You might even get a better salary too.

Good Luck

5

I know what you mean Scott. My job just had layoffs, with the possibility of more to come. Its a shitty situation to work in.

6

It’s just the uncertainty. I mean, if it’s been done, it’s done. In the can. If, for some stupid reason (I’ll get into that in a bit), I was chosen to be canned, it’s a fait accompli. So whether I stay or I go, I just want the relief of knowing one way or the other.

Anyway if my manager put my name on that form if and when she did that Sophie’s Choice thing, her stupidity would suddenly become glaring to me. I don’t think she’s stupid now, but if I were to get canned, I would. Here’s why:

Not to toot my own horn, but I guess I’m about to. In my group, I’m the resident expert in many apps we use: FrameMaker, Photoshop, Illustrator, CorelDRAW, etc. I’m also the best at graphics work, such as vector drawing. I’m the only one who knows how to design new fonts (I had to learn how when I updated all of our styles - oh, did I mention that I single-handedly updated the styles for our manuals and created a whole new look?). I’m not the best writer there (but I’m very good), and looking at my messy desk, you’d think I was the most scatterbrained, disorganized person there. However, I know where everything is, what’s going on, and what I have to get done. And I’ll say it again: I do it fantastically, thank-you-very-much.

Sure, no one is irreplaceable. Any one of the others could sit down and learn all the aforementioned apps just as well (OK, almost as well) as I did.

But seriously - why get rid of an asset? That would be fucking retarded. If you have to get rid of someone, get rid of that fuckwit who can barely write and always messes up the styles and numbers in his documents. Get rid of the overqualified one who’s planning on leaving at the end of August anyway and has made no secret of it.

This is fucking stupid. :mad:

  • s.e.
7

This is interesting as hell, sort of like a soap opera. Another Pyjama Pants :slight_smile:

I just noticed you’ve been registered two months max and already have over 600 posts, jeepers that’s 10 a day. :eek: Does this mean we can expect that to double or even triple if you get laid off? Or does the computer go too??? (like maybe it belongs to the company)

8

I’m glad you’re finding it interesting. No, sincerely, I am. At least I can be the protagonist in something.

No, I have a PC at home, though it runs like shit. I often post from home. At work, I post when I know it’s safe.

Would my posts increase were I to be laid off? I don’t know. I’d probably spend a week being brain dead, my only activities being going to the unemployment insurance office, and drinking myself into a stupor. Then I’d eventually revise my kick-ass CV, get my best friend to print it out on his laserjet, then make some copies. As well, I’d prepare what I call an e-CV, to ship around Monster.

If it were to happen to me, I’d rather just take the summer off to recoup and tie up some loose ends, do some cleaning around the house, and what not. However, I have a financial obligation to my parents (stupid, considering I’ll be 30 in exactly a week), so they’d no doubt be on my case to get a new job ASAP. Banking shit. Re-adjusting to a new pay schedule. Were I on unemployment, I’d be making 65% of my salary (before taxes, I believe - I don’t remember) - which isn’t bad at all. Plus, I’d be paid for this week’s work, my vacation (still at two weeks), and maybe get severance pay based on how long I’ve been at that job.

But still, it would be stupid for my manager to have put my name on that form. Do you want your fucking graphics done fast and well? Do you want someone around who can help anyone else out with FrameMaker, Illustrator, CorelDRAW, Photoshop, or whatever? Or do you want to assign this to someone else because you decided for some reason I was expendable? Because it will take five times as long for anyone else to learn those apps inside-out like I did. Sorry if I sound conceited, but that’s the way it is.

So my fucking desk is a bloody mess of gargantuan proportions. That doesn’t immediately make me a complete, ineffective idiot. What you might call disorganization is just the way I work. It all makes sense in my brain - but on appearance, maybe not in your little brain. I’m very sorry, but the others can have their desks as neat and organized as they want. It means nothing. NOTHING. I think of CW #3 whose desk is immaculate. Sure, he knows what’s going on, but so do I. We just work differently. It takes all types, for Christ’s sake.

So I don’t go on break with you all. Well, I was told that it wasn’t fair for me to go out on maybe three smoke breaks every morning and afternoon and also go on a long, extended, banal break with the group. Does that make me somehow fucking antisocial? No. Fair is fair. And if I don’t go to lunch with you, am I being antisocial? Hardly. I just can’t stand your banal conversations. Plus, I don’t like to spend 45 minutes waiting for my manager to finish poking the “food” in her Lean Cuisine® around and eventually finish, so I can go back to my desk. I’m not fucking antisocial. I’m pleasant with everyone. Jesus Christ, if they can me using that as one of the reasons, I’m going to fucking sue. I’m usually in good humor, and I never dodge assigments when they come to me. I’m there, I do my job, and people like me. So don’t fucking can me, fuck. My personality is different. Accept it. Don’t fire me because of it. I fit in just well - that’s one of the reasons they hired me in the first place: because they figured I’d fit in well - so can someone for work-related issues, not anything perceived interpersonal.

Can someone who can barely write. Can someone with no exclusive, discernable skills. Can someone who has nothing to do. Can me, and you’d be canning someone who gets the job done better than you ever expected it to be done. If you were to can me now, in a month or two, you’ll be fucking scrambling to find someone who can do vector drawings and solve FrameMaker problems.

Yeah, yeah, so my manager sneaks up behind me and sometimes finds me on a non-work-related web site. Big deal. I still get the work done. She bloody well knows all of us spend our spare time surfing - even her “Golden Boy.” (That’s another story.) But when I’m assigned to be the FrameMaker/styles expert for the group, I expect a bit more. I came through with new styles and a style guide that even our translators were impressed with. Fuck. To can me after all that? Fuck that. I would feel like some cheap whore: use me for whatever I’ve got, then dump me once you had no need for me.

Anyway, if anything happens, I’ve got examples of my writing and the complexity of the stuff I dealt with. On top of that, I’ve got so many skills that many others just don’t have. So, whatever.

We’ll see.

  • s.e.
9

Good luck there, Scotty Boy.

My agency just cut an ENTIRE department, keeping only the most senior and the most junior person.

Think you’ve got special skills? Think you impressed the big bosses with your talent for mastering new programs? Think that if your bosses were stupid enough to get rid of you that the entire place would grind to a halt and they’d come groveling back to you?

Try telling that to me and my two co-workers. We built the department from scratch We kept it going as others came and went. We crashed through on deadlines, we did 80 hour weeks, we pulled projects out of our asses after others screwed them up. Hell, we even trained our clients.

Then one day we all got the little tap on the shoulder, one after the other. And guess what. We all have examples of our writing and the complexity of the stuff we dealt with. And we all have many other skills that others don’t have. And now we’re all on the street competing with EACH OTHER for whatever jobs there are out there.

Go ahead and post some more on company time. At least you can use that screen to hide the resume you’d better be updating.

10

Like everyone sez…keep the resume up to date. Also, don’t count on your bosses being smart, many times they’re not. My immediate boss used to have my job and he’s aware of the level of complexity (Systems programmer in a mainframe shop) and general rarity of anyone around to fill it, but hey that never stopped anyone.

Good luck.

11

Hey Scott - it’s at least 10:00 there - any news yet? :eek:

12

Turning your personal bitterness into a personal attack on me shows a distinct lack of tact.

  • s.e.
13

And class, for that matter.

  • s.e.
14

At least if you get laid off you’ll have access to better food. :slight_smile:

15

Consider it a warning from one who’s been there.

16

I’ve been there, and I’ve never had a problem finding another job. Better, higher-paying jobs, even.

Let’s not turn this into a flamewar, OK?

  • s.e.
17

We just walked a member of my team out of here a half hour ago. Why? Cause they’re making cutbacks, and he made the most money (I’m assuming here, but probably right).

I hate when people get laid off around here. I’m in the IT department so we get to do all the cloak and dagger shit while the person’s boss is breaking the bad news. Disable accounts, grab computer, etc. Not fun, especially when it’s a member of your own team.

18

In case you didn’t know, many (if not the majority) of us post on company time. Myself included.

19

scott_e, good luck today, whatever might happen. I know the waiting, wondering and speculation are tough, but you will be fine. If your manager is stupid enough to let you go, then someone else will be smart enough to hire you. On the other hand, maybe you’ll discover that your manager isn’t so stupid after all.

Still, some of the other posters have a point. If this sort of thing keeps happening at your company – rumored or real – then it might be a sign that the company is not in the best shape. So it might be worthwhile to consider making a move while you control the timing and can call the shots.

Not that helps on this day in particular, but something to consider post-Friday. Hang in there! And keep us updated!

20

Jerevan, my love…

When, oh when will you get a Hotmail account so that we can flirt endlessly via AbFab quotes all day? :wink:

Well, it’s 12:36 and nothing has happened, either here or in the building across the street. The big boss of my division took off, for lunch, presumably.

Then again, Office Gossip Rumor Queen® said last week that someone told her that sometimes they do the axing at 3 PM. Yeah, right.

What a load of crap this all is. It’s becoming a joke. If I were to get canned, I’d probably burst out laughing.

But it’s true that I should update my CV and keep an eye out for other jobs.

  • s.e.