"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.