Chop Chop

Turns out I misunderstood my boss on Monday when I thought he said people would be notified by the end of the week if they were being layed-off (or is it laid-off?). They were notified by the end of the DAY. Everything makes a lot more sense now. Really.

One guy on my team was "impacted" and another from my second-line area was also "impacted." In this context, "impacted" means kicked out on your butt after 15 years with the company. Oh, and all the work is still there to do. I assume all the extra work will be out-sourced to a group of eager gnomes and fairies who will come in the dark of night and take care of everything. Gotta remember to give my fairy godmother a call too. Maybe she and her wand can pitch in.

In other news, my officemate of seven years cleaned out his desk yesterday. We don't work in the same division anymore, so he was "impacted" three weeks ago. Friday is his last official day on the payroll. See, when you get notice that you've been "impacted," you have four more weeks on the payroll. You're supposed to spend that time transferring your knowledge to someone else who doesn't have time to think about it, and also looking for another job within the company. Of which there are none, so looking is pointless. Officemate actually has been showing the ropes to the guy who is taking over his work. I think that's really nice of him. He's definitely nicer than me.

And of course there's a cherry on top of this magnificent sundae. Two weeks ago today, another guy on my team was hit and killed by a drunk driver while riding his motorcycle. A bunch of us went to a memorial for him last Saturday. There was a huge crowd. He was a very friendly and well-liked guy. Ironically, at the event I also got to catch up with a few former coworkers who had been layed-off in recent months.

Plus...I know it's a really inappropriate thought and I would never say it to anyone except all of you out on the internets...I wondered if his accident would mean that someone else on the team would get to keep their job. Don't know if it did or not, and didn't ask.

Needless to say, it's been a very uplifting few weeks here at Mega-Corporation. Everything is so freaking quiet. Everyone is cranky and irritable (including self). We survivors are numbly slogging through the drifts of work that have continued to accumulate during all the drama, with no hope of getting it all under control anyway, so why bother. Sigh.

Now it's back to our regularly scheduled programming: chipping away at the rocks in the salt mine and doing our best to keep the crazy at bay.

P.S. Is it "laid-off or "layed-off." I really need to know.

A Little Shot of Adrenalin on a Monday Morning

My boss (who resides in another city), called me this morning to tell me that Mega-Corporation is planning some "work force reductions" in our group which will be announced later this week..............but that I am not affected.

I proceeded to curse and physically threaten him for scaring the crap out me so early in the morning. Am such a lady.

Oh, and would I please not discuss this call with anyone? Apparently, someone higher up asked the first-line managers to reassure those who don't need to worry, probably so we'll keep working like busy little bees, and not updating our resumes and linking to each other on LinkedIn.com and standing around in the hallways speculating.

There may not be a good way to do this, but I'm not convinced that this is the least worse way. Technically, all we should have to do now is figure out who didn't get a "safe" call. But who has the nerve to ask someone else if they got a call? Not me.

I feel bad for my boss. He's a decent guy, stuck with a really crappy task. Sometimes being a manager sucks.

Of course, I feel really bad for those who are going to be unemployed by the end of the week, but don't know it yet. And I feel relieved and grateful and guilty that it's not going to be me this time. But I keep in mind that six months from now it may be me.

So now we wait to see where the axe falls.....

Crackbook

I discovered this new thing recently. You may have heard of it. Facebook. Oh. My. Gawd. The thing is either a highly addictive drug or a time portal to another dimension. I log into it and the next thing I know it’s three hours later. I click on friends of friends of friends and before you know it, I’ve found the girl who lived down the street when I was a kid, who I haven’t seen since 1973.

I’ve got some questions though. Maybe someone out there can be of assistance. Firstly, I’m getting friend requests from people with whom I went to high school and college. <-- (Note the correct use of “whom” in a sentence. I’m feeling sooo clever today.) Some of the requestors I know (or knew) well enough to call friends. Other people, well, I can’t actually say that. Yeah, I hauled out the old annuals and, sure enough, there they are. But I didn’t actually know them then, you know, when we lived in the same town and went to the same school. Being my friend wasn’t a priority then. Why do they want to be my friends now that we live in different states? Is there some sort of competition that I’m not aware of? He who dies with the most friend connections on Facebook wins?

I got one friend request from a guy whose name I vaguely remember, but nothing else. He currently has over 1700 “friends.” Is it even possible to be friends with 1700 people? Has the word “friend” been redefined by Facebook to mean “someone I might have met once”? I’m confused. I’m not up on Facebook etiquette. I don’t want to be rude, but I have no desire to say I’m friends with a complete stranger. Maybe Miss Manners should write an article or something. It would really help.

Secondly, I want to know who all these old, chubby, wrinkled, bald, gray people are and why are they using the names of my classmates on Facebook? I’m shocked, just SHOCKED, at the way some of these people have let themselves go. Because obviously I still look 19, so it can’t be that hard to do a little moisturizing now and then. Ahem. Moving right along....

Thirdly, does everyone put as much effort into their profile picture as I did? Or, is anyone else willing to admit it? I swear I must have taken 30 or 40 pictures of myself. Almost all of them were rejected.

No, too blurry.
No, the lighting sucks and I don’t do Photoshop well enough to fix it.
No, my eyes look bugged out.
No, the jowls I inherited from my grandma are too obvious.
No, I look depressed.
No, you can sorta see the pile of laundry in the background.
No, my double chin is accented by that shadow.
No, my hair looks funny.

I finally settled on three candidates and asked for Slag’s advice. There was one that I thought looked the best, but Slag picked this one, saying it looked the most like me. That’s fine. I don’t want it to look like I’m trying too hard or anything. Heh.




P.S. Don't know if I'll ever get a picture of Slag's goatee posted. I casually mentioned it to him a couple of days ago and got "We'll talk about it." Definitely not promising.