I knew the minute I patted myself of the back about making progress, something catastrophic would happen.
This time was no exception.
Wednesday was a bloody and brutal day at the place where I work.
95% percent of my department as well as 9 other people from our location were laid off in a precise and efficient manner.
That’s if you’re looking at it from a corporate perspective.
If you choose to take the human view of things, you may have a different opinion.
Instead of retelling Wednesday’s bloodletting, I’ll tell you how my previous employer went about the process in the summer of 2007.
My whole group was notified 60 days out that our department was being eliminated and that we had that time to post internally.
Everyone and their mother knew that unless you had the in” with peeps from another department, you weren’t going anywhere.
But at least we had 60 days to wrap our head around what was going to happen, make financial arrangements, dust of the resume, clean out our desk and say our goodbyes to our work friends.
In short we had closure.
Now I know with people and things being what they are these days, you have to look out for #1.
No entity embodies this philosophy better than corporate America.
You don’t know if someone is going to screw with your internal systems or if they’re going to walk in with a gun and shoot the place up.
The world is a scary place.
That being said, it’s difficult enough to try to figure out your next move when you have 60 days notice. Imagine being called from your desk one minute and the next you’re being handed your severance package---if you’re lucky.
That might just screw with your head.
The flip side of the coin is that you’re good enough to secure employment and trusted enough to be granted access to a secure office in a secure building; it’s ironic in a manner of a half an hour you have someone looking over your shoulder watching you clean out your desk.
That’s some cold shit.
But you’re probably wondering, what does this mean for Woody?
That, my friends, has yet to be determined.