If you think Halloween is scary, you should experience November in Corporate America. No treats, but plenty of tricks, all played on the employees. The cruelest part is you don't even see the Grim Reaper coming, because they're never wearing a hooded cloak or carrying a sickle. Just a wool blazer and a laptop.
The first sign is the hastily announced, mandatory staff meeting. When you get invited to an all-hands meeting that begins within the next half hour, rest assured, someone's getting laid off. Multiple someones, most likely. I was caught offguard the first time, four years ago. I thought something had happened to my boss's husband, because he'd been in the hospital the week before and she seemed suddenly so upset. He was fine. Four of my co-workers, not so much. That one came the week before Thanksgiving. Very festive. Every year since, the meetings have crept closer and closer to the start of the month. Almost like they never want us to be too sure when gallows-humor season officially opens.
This year's opened today. We got the meeting invite at 9:06. By 9:30, we were all gathered in the large conference room wondering who the unlucky bastards would be this time around. Things kicked off per usual, with a video presentation from our CEO Ed Slauss, or Slash, as we call him. From his cushy office in the Kansas City HQ, he small-talked us about all the trick-or-treaters they had in his neighborhood last night, how many Fortnite characters and Star Wars costumes he saw. Just a regular guy, connecting at the human level, like they taught in MBA school.
Then he shifted gears and started in on the growth forecasts for 2019 and all the exciting projects coming our way, and how we'll be running lean to stay one step ahead of our competitors. And then he displayed a revised company org chart that featured a new director-level position in the Mumbai office. I recognized the name. I trained that guy when he visited our office three years ago. Now he's a director.
I was already growing suspicious by the time Ed slipped in the phrase "pruning the trees," as casually and coolly as if he'd practiced it. Five minutes later the video conference wrapped up, with Ed telling us our managers would take it from there on a team level. Which we all expected, because this has become standard operating procedure. Ed blows smoke up our shorts from 2,000 miles away, then leaves the dirty work to his underlings.
Only this year, when we broke into our smaller groups, our site's HR rep stood in the corner staring at the carpet while all the other teams filed out of the conference room. And that's when I knew. The HR rep wields the ceremonial dagger. Last year she kept the technology team back and 1/3 of them left that day with severance packages, including my former lunch buddy Derek, who eventually hooked on at a small startup two months after his severance ran dry.
I knew. And it suddenly made sense why Helen and Sally Sue got promoted last week. When Slash strikes, it's always a precision hit, done by job title so the company can't be sued for discrimination. They'll wipe out everyone at a particular level in a group. That way, they can claim it's only for business reasons and is unrelated to job performance, race, gender, hair-color, height, etc. It's a lazy and stupid way to run a company, but it's not my problem anymore.
My last day is the 16th. We get two weeks pay for every year of service, so I will be paid for another 16 weeks after that. Better than a kick in the balls, but not by a whole lot.
I'm tempted to call in sick tomorrow, but I probably shouldn't. We can cash out our unused time off in our last paycheck, and I'm going to need to stash as much away as possible. If it took Derek five months to find a job with actual, translatable job skills, who knows how long of a search I'm facing. I'll be on the breadline before it's over.
Maybe this would be a good time to remind everyone that my book is for sale. You can keep a starving artist from literally starving--and get an entertaining read at the same time. Win-win.
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