"Good to See You" Takes on New Meaning

The company that I work for laid off 9% of its staff from the corporate headquarters yesterday. As a veteran of many, many layoffs, I have to say that they did it in the most humane way possible - or, as one executive I used to work for would say, "If you have to eat a turd, do it fast."

We all received an email yesterday morning just after 8:30. Or at least it appeared we did. Little did we know there were 2 emails. One set of people got an email telling us to come to a meeting at 9:00am at an unspecified location on our floor. The other email (this one I did not receive) directed its recipients to a meeting room at 8:45am. The poor souls who received the 8:45am invitation were laid off.

When we congregated for the 9am meeting, we were told that our company was blah, blah, blah poor economy, and blah, blah, blah difficult decisions and that affected team members were notified at 8:45am. They read that part twice - about the affected team members were already notified at 8:45am. In other words, if you didn't already know, you were safe.

Whew!

What's that saying about the best laid plans? As I returned to my cube, still processing what I'd just heard, I noticed a figure pass my cube and head for the cube of a group manager (that's a manager's boss in our company's management food chain) across the aisle from me. From the corner of my eye (an aside: I think I was afraid to look - I guess I knew deep down inside what was about to happen) I noticed said group manager follow our department director (that's 2 levels up in the management food chain) down the aisle and into an unoccupied conference room.

Holy sh*t! They're still laying people off! I know they said they were done, but they're not! F*cketty, f*ck! Then I started cataloging all the reasons they could be coming for me - the executives don't know me, I'm expensive compared to all these young whippersnappers around me, I offended someone and I didn't realize it, etc. I felt trapped and helpless - I want to run, but it would be of no use.

Every pitter-patter of footsteps in my aisle caused my pulse to double. I began emailing everyone I knew to see if they'd survived. Literally the first person I contacted replied "...everyone's fine - except me". I wanted to scream.

Shortly thereafter, the aforementioned group manager returned, nearly teary eyed, and began the humbling process of boxing up his personal items. He later shook my hand and said goodbye. It was sad for both of us.

It wasn't until about 11am that I found my boss and confirmed that everyone had indeed been notified. None of the managers knew anything - the criteria for selection most notably. The management layer 3 slots above me were the only ones that knew Tuesday was an "event" day and who would be laid off. So it was a surprise to even the managers, which is actually kind of scary when everyone is panicking. (The managers tried to look calm, like parents in a thunderstorm, but most of us could see through the facade.)

Here's what really happened (at least in many cases): the emails were sent just after 8:30, and then for what I can only assume were security reasons, the user IDs of the "affected" employees were deactivated. Immediately. So they couldn't read the message telling them where to go for the 8:45 meeting. Many, my friend included, prairie-dogged out from their cubes and asked of cubemates, "Hey, did you guys get this meeting invite for 8:45? Where do we go?" I realized later that the group manager across the aisle was having the same problem, but just followed the rest of us to the 9am meeting.

I understand the strategy employed - the company wanted the affected employees to know first, even before their managers. But it wasn't executed as planned and caused extra dismay.

Today work resumed. Affected teams met to devise how to make up for the lost co-workers. We all quietly mourned those affected, vowed to help them any way we could, then moved on to the business at hand.

And in the elevators today, whenever you saw someone you hadn't seen in a while, you said, "Hey - good to see you." And we meant it.

So I'm Reading This Book, Part 2

One more post, then I'm caught up.

Look Me in the Eye - My Life with Asperger's by John Elder Robison. Nonfiction.
About: The older brother of writer Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors), Robison describes life on the Autism spectrum.
My thoughts: Robison describes growing up unknowingly on the Autism spectrum. A fabulous book - one that I shared pieces of with my own little Aspy sons. Robison wasn't diagnosed until the age of 40, so he can share how he really felt as a child, especially with the benefit of hindsight.
I highly recommend this book to any parent of a child on the Autism spectrum. It is required reading!

So I'm Reading This Book...

Earlier this year I tried (not-so-valiantly) to catalog the books I've read this year on this very blog. Of course I lost track. Now I'm trying to catch up in one long post. Keep in mind - this list is all I have record of - library books have long been checked back in and forgotten. In no particular order:

What is the What by Dave Eggers. Nonfiction-sort of.
About: the account of one of The Lost Boys of Sudan, or the story of a Darfur refugee, told in an autobiographical voice by an American author.
My thoughts: Wow, where to begin. Do I start with a gimmicky device where Mr. Eggers writes an "autobiography" for Sudanese refugee Achuk Deng? Eggers' distinctive style only broke through a few times.
No, I think I will always remember the incredible, unspeakable things Deng witnessed all before the age of 12. Village burned, separated from family, literally running for his life at the age of 10. Walking with 300 other boys across the desert to Ethiopia. Seeing friends die of exhaustion, dehydration, and starvation. Living among 40,000 others, unwelcome, in a refugee camp in Ethiopia. With 5 other same-age boys, burying the dead in the camp. Fleeing from the gunfire of Ethiopians into alligator infested waters of the Gilo river. Seeing fellow refugees become the center of said alligators in feeding frenzy. All this and not quite halfway through the book. Then it just gets worse. Friends captured and turned into slaves. Slaves! In the 1990s! I could go on but I won't.
A great, great book. I was spent when I finished it.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss. Nonfiction.
About: grammar.
My thoughts: Yep, a book about grammar. By a militant grammarian. She was utterly appalled by the title of the film Two Weeks Notice. "Where's the apostrophe?" It's a charming little book about proper punctuation. I really liked it.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Fiction.
About: A father-son journey through post-apocalyptic America
My thoughts: Another wow! Two wows! This is possible the most affecting book I've ever read. I changed my view of life after reading this book. Stylistically spartan - just like the surroundings described inside. A man and his 10 year old son journey to the sea during a nuclear winter following what was apparently the war to end all wars. No food, no animals to kill, vegetation dead, the surviving humans feed off each other. An amazing journey. Do not read this book if you are depressed.

Everyone is Entitled to My Opinion by David Brinkley. Nonfiction.
About: a collection of Brinkley's one minute signoffs from his Sunday morning TV show.
My thoughts: November 6, 1983 - two reports on greenhouse gases suggest that climate change is 100-200 years away. If only we knew then what we know now.
September 13, 1987 - Presidential candidate Joe Biden is accused of plagiarizing a speech from a British Labour Party candidate. However, Biden credited the author several times during the speech. So, contrary to popular belief, Biden is not a plagiarist.

The Dilbert Future by Scott Adams. Nonfiction.
About: the future, according to Dilbert.
My thoughts: A mostly uninteresting rehash of strips. Except...
In the last chapter, Adams shares what he really thinks. There is one theory of note. Gravity doesn't exist. We are just part of a universe in which every piece of matter is doubling in size every second. Wacky.

Cartoon History of the Modern World by Larry Gonick. Nonfiction.
About: a graphic novel history book.
My thoughts: I really enjoy the cartoon history series. A great way to bone up on history.

Presenting the exciting year-end double issue of the 2008 Non-denominational, Holiday-type Newsletter of the Gonzalez Family

Lycra Shaped People

I started working out a bit more this summer, adding some biking trips (rule: get bike to a path, ride in a single direction as hard as possible into the wind for 1 hour, then return) to my regimen. And I also started running 1 to 2 times a week, no more than 1 hour at a time. And I lost some weight (15-20 pounds depending how you account for it).

I decided that, because of my propensity for profuse sweat, I needed to start layering my workout uniform. Thus began the search for those spandex/lycra/nylon-lyra-spandex-mix shirts that those runners/cyclists wear. Folks wearing those clothes never look like sweaty pigs. Sweaty pigs like me.

I found and purchased a particular shirt that appeared to be my size. I didn't try it on in the store for a number of uninteresting reasons, but when I got home I threw it on just before dinner (and a later workout that night).

It's a tight shirt. It's tight enough that it cannot be removed without reversing it. It's not ridiculously tight - it doesn't leave marks on my skin or anything.

My appearance at the dinner table drew double-takes from both my wife and teenaged daughter. "Wow," my daughter gasped, "it's kinda wrong when your dad is chiseled." My wife scanned me like a construction worker scans a pretty office blond and added, "Wow, you are looking good."

Bolstered by this unsolicited praise, I checked myself in the mirror after my workout that night. With the shirt on - yeah, I'm kinda chiseled. Not quite ready for the Body Armour ad, but there's definitely a muscular, manly shape there.

Then I removed the shirt. "Hey, where'd it go?" Suddenly all the flabby parts covering my six-pack abs re-appeared. My chiseled-ness had vanished.

"Oh my God, I'm an idiot. It's the shirt." The shirt shapes my body, tightening in the right spots, nudging the malleable flesh into areas that then appear muscular. It's like a push-up bra for men!

Then I began noticing just how common this phenomenon is. Because of my wife I know that there are about 72 kinds of underwear for women that "shape" their bodies. Now there are for men too. And when I began to really look for the lycra-shaped people, there they were, all around me. I'd never noticed before.

We have become a society of lycra-shaped people, well on our way to becoming the morbidly obese, amorphous blobs featured in the Pixar film Wall-E.