a sad day...

It was like they were randomly shooting at people. I knew it would be bad, but its totally something you do not ever want to experience. Good news: I’m safe and I could potentially have a very good job for the future. (We’ll talk about that in another post.) Bad news: There were a lot of people laid off.

We knew it would be a crazy day when we saw a mouse run across from my cubicle to my co-workers. I was pissed. I can’t work under these conditions, I kept saying. I said this would be a good day to do layoffs. Because if they lay me off I won’t be so sad today. I started applying for other jobs after a mouse was found in another co-worker’s drawer. Mice poop was on her desk. This was the fifth mouse sighting we had encountered.

Who knew 15 minutes later the layoffs start? It’s been a year since they told us there would be layoffs. It was like they were randomly shooting people. Six people were set up meetings with HR for packages, one was told he had until Nov. 30, then his position would be eliminated. Thirty minutes later it became apparent, this was the day. They started calling people and asking them to go down to the other side of the building. One by one people’s phone started ringing. You did not want to get that ring.

For three hours everyone was on edge. It was the longest 3 hours of our lives. Whenever a phone rang, someone jumped. After a while, the rule became, “don’t call anybody.” Because whenever someone got that call, they just walked down to the other side of the building. Each person was gone for a while, then came back, got their stuff and left.

I will never forget one of my co-workers who started packing up his stuff. We asked where we was going and he said, “They are going to let me go.” We all looked kind of like, you don’t know that. He hadn’t gotten the call. Then right there and then his phone rang.

It wasn’t just the people who had been there for 20 years and were over 60; there were even some people in their 20’s and 30’s.

There were about 120 in our department. Calls were made randomly on teams. By lunch a whole team was let go along with about 20 other people. That’s not including the people upstairs who were laid off. It was bad.

My boss who was part of the committee that outlined the reorganization came back after noon. She told us they were done laying off people. “That was the hardest thing I ever had to do,” she said. She just started crying and hugging all of us.

I’m not so sure if I like the fact of being warned a whole year in advance or not. But to endure three hours of lay offs was exhausting. It was sad…very sad.