Welcome to the Great Depression done up all 2008 style.In times of economic strife, marketing budgets are the first things that get cut.
The soft things -- things like building a company's brand -- get pushed to the back burner. Downward spiralling marketing budgets somehow reduce a company's appetite for the fun things in life, like paying a million bucks to watch a chimp bang a drum for E-Trade.
In publically held companies like mine, that means that showing a profit often means shaving the workforce. It's everyone's favourite way to show fiscal responsibility.
So, there were layoffs at the agency yesterday.
Ten people from different departments were let go. Two came from our group.
It's a surreal, sickening experience.
When 10 people are let go, it needs to be a well-timed exercise. And the HR gurus and the lawyers always reccomend that those on the receiving end of layoffs be "walked". They're afraid of corporate espionage.
So the shocked and disappointed workers are escorted out of the building like criminals.
But that's not even the worst part.
The Prez -- who's about as popular around here as George W., and has unleashed about as much carnage -- called a staff meeting in the middle of it all...before our people had even been told.
And then he did something even worse, he read out of the name of someone from another department who had lost his job. A gentle, wonderful soul.
Thing is, this friend from another department hadn't been told yet, either. He was on holiday. He found out that he was fired when his friends started text messaging him with the message, "Sorry to hear, Dude."
"Sorry for what," he said.
And that's how he heard.
Back in the days of The Great Depression, hobos developed a system of symbols -- often marked in chalk or coal -- that would provide information and warnings to other hobos.
A cat indicated that a kind lady lives here. A square missing its top line indicated that it was safe to camp in this location.
A box with a dot in the middle meant: danger, brutal man.
If I had any guts, I'd go mark the area outside the President's office.
5 comments:
I double dog dare ya to do so. You could blame it on halloween hooligans.
I'm so sorry to hear it. This has got to be so hard on everyone. I'm thinking of you doll...
did you know Hobo stands for homeward bound?
I just read that the other day. weird.
hugs to you. I know it's really tough when you actually care.
Layoffs suck. They are demeaning and cold. We - me too - become a little more calloused - we try to build a shell around ourselves to insulate the meanness of it.
We spend so much time of our lives at work - we become what we do. Then, without warning - we are dumped. We are "less than."
I have to "let go" of someone I hardly even know. Th focus is the coaching I am getting around "how to do it, so we don't get sued."
You would think the previous managers would have spent more time coaching on what this person had to do to improve. We are doing this "layoff" to the bottom performers.
This guy thinks he is doing great.
Today will be a hard day for him. I unfortunately will feel his pain to a point. But I don't have to go home tell his wife and daughter and figure out what the hell to do for the 8 to 10 hours each day he now has nothing to do to fill his day - A void.
Did I say it sucks?
Oh yeah. They are giving him 2 weeks severance.
PS - I know about corporate finances and all that crud - what makes it hard to swallow is the corporate greed on Wall Street and the corporate payouts of CEOs who kill companies.
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