You hear a lot these days about layoffs and what they are doing to workplaces. Low morale, heavier workload on those left behind, survivor's guilt.
I can relate to the lowered morale and the heavier workload, but survivor's guilt? Sorry, can't go there. I've worked past midnight and every weekend and pretty much every holiday for too many years and am simply too exhausted by my schedule (and the fact that I haven't had a week off in nearly a year) to feel survivor's guilt.
Don't get me wrong -- I am very grateful to have a job at all in this economy, and I intend to do my best at that job as long as it is there for me. I have no choice -- our household depends on two incomes. But reading all these articles about post-layoff workplace issues has me wondering if those who write them have any clue what they're talking about.
Take the office refrigerator. Please.
No one ever seems to write about this, which is why I'm convinced that the layoff stories I read in newspapers are written by free-lancers who never actually set foot in a newsroom.
I've never been unfortunate enough to actually be at the office as co-workers are being told that their services will no longer be needed (one of the few good things about working nights is avoiding these scenes, which generally happen during "regular" hours). So I don't know exactly what people do in those minutes between the time they are informed of their layoff and the time they leave the building.
But I can tell you what they DON'T do -- they don't take their food out of the refrigerator.
The results are predictable, and when I read a Chicago Tribune article a couple of weeks ago about an office refrigerator whose fumes actually resulted in several people being hospitalized, it didn't take much for me to imagine how the situation had developed.
It's been more than two months since the last round of layoffs at my workplace -- and it was a huge round. So you know where this is going.
Yes, the food is still there, festering. No one wants to touch what one of my fellow night-shift workers refers to as the "Dinners of the Damned." And who can blame them? I'm certainly not volunteering for the task. And whoever was disgusted enough to post the aforementioned Chicago Tribune article in the kitchen area of our newsroom apparently didn't volunteer, either.
I haven't given a lot of thought to what I would do if I were laid off. It's unlikely I'd have what it takes to launch into one of those philosophical speeches that movies are made of, or to make a dramatic exit that is forever enshrined in newsroom lore.
I admire those who do make a memorable exit, though. Like one former co-worker who, on layoff day, got "the call" to please come up to the publisher's office. Sure, she said, I'll be right up. Rumor has it that she immediately headed there, where her supervisor and other bureaucratic types were waiting. But instead of taking a left and going up the stairs at the end of the hall, she took a right -- straight down the stairs, out to the parking lot and off into the sunset. (On behalf of beleaguered worker bees everywhere, here's to you, G.B.!)
I hope the layoff scenes are over. But if I should get the ax, you can bet I won't take long to pack my stuff. I won't scream, cry, throw a fit or launch into a soapbox rant about the disintegrating morals of corporate America. I'll probably just quietly fade away.
And I'll take my dinner with me.
Showing posts with label newspapers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label newspapers. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Woe is not me -- yet
OK, so it's been awhile. I haven't subjected any of you to my ramblings lately because, well, I can't think of anything new to ramble about. Which is good, because I have finally reached the age where the phrase "no news is good news" actually makes sense.
But the thing is, there's always news. This week's news is that I have started taking what is likely to be a long list of classes to upgrade my skills in preparation for a new career. I'll admit that I put this off for a long time, not because I didn't want to go back to school, but because I hate having only one night a week at home. (Elijah doesn't mind it at all, given that any night Mom's gone means he gets to eat dinner in the den with Dad and make all sorts of disgusting bodily noises. Mom tends to take all the fun out of things with her insistence on sitting at the table and not belching. Or worse.)
So now I'm taking an HTML/XHTML/CSS class on Monday and Tuesday nights, then working Thursday nights through Sunday nights. With any luck, I'll develop enough skills in Web site architecture that I can go into the underlying code for this blog and make some changes to the template, such as getting the title to be in proper uppercase and lowercase letters (those trendy all-lowercase things drive me insane.).
More importantly, of course, is the fact that I'm in the job market, which, as you may have heard, is not a real great place to be right now. I technically still have a job, although it could evaporate this week or next. (Yes, it's layoff time again -- the fifth round of layoffs/buyouts at my company in the past 14 months.)
Got a fork? Stick it in some newspapers. They're done.
So I'm trying to keep in mind the GOOD things about a likely job loss. For me, it means eight hours of sleep a night. No more getting home from a commute downtown at 12:30 or 1 a.m. No more going to work on Friday nights, Saturday nights, Sunday nights, holidays, 52 weeks a year. No more snapping at Elijah because I'm exhausted. Mondays are especially bad, which doesn't bode well for learning computer code from 6 til 9:30 on Monday nights.
If you happen to be someone I work with -- or one of my bosses (yeah, I know I sent you an e-mail from home and forgot to delete the link to this blog in the tagline), please keep in mind that I do not WANT to be laid off. If given the option, I'd probably stay til the ship goes down, simply because I'm a stay-til-the-ship-goes-down kind of gal. (Plus, so far I haven't been able to find another job.)
Sorry for the cliche (the kind of thing I get paid to take OUT of other people's writing), but the ship is indeed going down -- you know it as well as I do.
I thought about posting a bunch of links here to various articles and blogs about my industry's demise, but those of you who care probably have already read all you can stand to read about it. I'm just hoping I hear about any layoff involving me BEFORE my name gets posted on one of them. That's a lousy way to learn about your job loss, although only slightly lousier than getting the news in an e-mail, which seems to be a growing trend.
I will say that I understand why no one wants to read newspapers anymore. Nobody sums the reasons better than Will Bunch on the Huffington Post site. Click on that, read it and watch the Jon Stewart video. It's a scream.
And sometimes, screaming is all you can do.
But the thing is, there's always news. This week's news is that I have started taking what is likely to be a long list of classes to upgrade my skills in preparation for a new career. I'll admit that I put this off for a long time, not because I didn't want to go back to school, but because I hate having only one night a week at home. (Elijah doesn't mind it at all, given that any night Mom's gone means he gets to eat dinner in the den with Dad and make all sorts of disgusting bodily noises. Mom tends to take all the fun out of things with her insistence on sitting at the table and not belching. Or worse.)
So now I'm taking an HTML/XHTML/CSS class on Monday and Tuesday nights, then working Thursday nights through Sunday nights. With any luck, I'll develop enough skills in Web site architecture that I can go into the underlying code for this blog and make some changes to the template, such as getting the title to be in proper uppercase and lowercase letters (those trendy all-lowercase things drive me insane.).
More importantly, of course, is the fact that I'm in the job market, which, as you may have heard, is not a real great place to be right now. I technically still have a job, although it could evaporate this week or next. (Yes, it's layoff time again -- the fifth round of layoffs/buyouts at my company in the past 14 months.)
Got a fork? Stick it in some newspapers. They're done.
So I'm trying to keep in mind the GOOD things about a likely job loss. For me, it means eight hours of sleep a night. No more getting home from a commute downtown at 12:30 or 1 a.m. No more going to work on Friday nights, Saturday nights, Sunday nights, holidays, 52 weeks a year. No more snapping at Elijah because I'm exhausted. Mondays are especially bad, which doesn't bode well for learning computer code from 6 til 9:30 on Monday nights.
If you happen to be someone I work with -- or one of my bosses (yeah, I know I sent you an e-mail from home and forgot to delete the link to this blog in the tagline), please keep in mind that I do not WANT to be laid off. If given the option, I'd probably stay til the ship goes down, simply because I'm a stay-til-the-ship-goes-down kind of gal. (Plus, so far I haven't been able to find another job.)
Sorry for the cliche (the kind of thing I get paid to take OUT of other people's writing), but the ship is indeed going down -- you know it as well as I do.
I thought about posting a bunch of links here to various articles and blogs about my industry's demise, but those of you who care probably have already read all you can stand to read about it. I'm just hoping I hear about any layoff involving me BEFORE my name gets posted on one of them. That's a lousy way to learn about your job loss, although only slightly lousier than getting the news in an e-mail, which seems to be a growing trend.
I will say that I understand why no one wants to read newspapers anymore. Nobody sums the reasons better than Will Bunch on the Huffington Post site. Click on that, read it and watch the Jon Stewart video. It's a scream.
And sometimes, screaming is all you can do.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
A day in the life
You hear a lot these days about the plight of the unemployed. Not to minimize what they are going through -- after all, it's beginning to look like we'll all be there eventually -- but what about the plight of the fearing-they'll-soon-be unemployed? Particularly those who are married to a fellow member of that tribe?
Jeff and I both work in recession-eviscerated industries, so worrying about the future is not merely an intellectual exercise in our house. It's an all-out obsession, and it has a disturbing way of weaving itself in and out of virtually every moment of the day.
Think I'm exaggerating? Then pour yourself a cup of coffee, settle in for a spell and take a look at a typical day in my life. This is a day when I am off work, in recognition of the fact that soon, "off work" may be my default condition.
(Yes, this is nauseatingly self-absorbed. That's what you get for reading a blog.)
A Day in the Life of the Tenuously Employed
5:45 a.m.: Groan at the sound of bedroom door opening, knowing I'll never get back to sleep. The resident 5-year-old does not suffer fools who stay in bed past 6 a.m. (It's like having a cat, only with college tuition looming in the future.)
7:15: Finally give up on getting back to sleep, and go downstairs to what, in retrospect, will be the most satisfying part of the day: Curling up on the sofa with a strong cup of coffee and the newspaper. Please note the importance of an actual newspaper, not the Internet, in the Most Satisfying Part of the Day.
8: Begin the process of getting the child fed, toothbrushed, dressed, strapped into car seat and delivered to preschool, in what will later prove to have been the most productive 45 minutes of the day.
8:50: Upon returning home, do a quick check of industry blogs in an effort to determine whether I have been laid off. This sounds absurd, but trust me, it is not.
9:10: After 20 minutes spent scouring industry blogs with unsettling minute-by-minute announcements of job cuts and furloughs at newspapers nationwide, decide to check locally based blogs for information on my specific employer. Feel a strong need to shower afterward.
9:20: After a total of 30 minutes spent on various blogs with the result of finding about five minutes' worth of useful information, decide to access work e-mail to see if any official news on today's rumored layoffs has been disseminated. None has.
9:30: Convince myself that a quick check of Facebook actually constitutes a productive use of my time. Networking, you know.
10:00: Finally finish reading various friends' "25 Random Things" lists, all the while patting myself on the back for the fact that my own "Random Things" list is far more witty and erudite than theirs.
10:01: Realize that I have just associated the words "witty" and "erudite" with the "Random Things" fad, and feel a moment of shame. Then I recall this fad's true value: the spawning of countless spoofs -- many of which are, indeed, witty and erudite. Click here for a good one.
10:02: Realize that I have 28 minutes to get to my son's preschool Valentine's Day party, for which I have been assigned to bring "healthy snacks," as opposed to "fun snacks." This further verifies my status as World's Least-Fun Mom.
10:28: While dashing out the door with aforementioned healthy snacks in hand, recall reading somewhere that careers in education are considered among the most recession-proof.
10:30: Shortly before entering classroom, begin to consider a career change to early childhood education.
10:31: Rethink career change to early childhood education.
10:35: Completely abandon plans for career change to early childhood education.
11:30: Arrive home with sugar-crazed 5-year-old and a week's supply of sweet treats. Begin lunch process, which boils down to fixing, coaxing, threatening, bribing and cleanup.
12:15: Check industry blogs yet again. Read much talk of plans for unpaid furloughs industry-wide.
12:20: Contemplate the phrase "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic." Wonder if anyone actually did this. Don't recall seeing it in the movie.
12:25: Take time to appreciate the value of the Titanic in providing a framework for countless analogies throughout the remainder of the 20th century and into the 21st. Recall headline in "history" book by the great folks at The Onion: "World's Largest Metaphor Hits Ice-berg."
12:30: Realize that only 30 minutes past noon, I have already spent far more time online today than reading the newspaper.
12:31: Perish the thought.
12:35: Spend several minutes contemplating how much garish wallpaper I could remove from my home on a furlough week. Realize that at my home-improvement rate, very little would actually get done. But if I'm laid off until the economy is expected to turn around (fourth quarter of 2010), I might get the downstairs bathroom and the dining room finished.
12:45: Load child into car and head to Very Large Upscale Health Club that I really can't afford but belong to anyway.
2:00: Notice, not for the first time, the number of working-age men at the club in the middle of a weekday afternoon. Can't help but wonder how many of them are here because they have recently lost their jobs.
2:05: Vow to myself not to continue paying Very Large Upscale Health Club membership if anyone in my house loses a job.
2:15: While on cardio machines, read Time magazine cover story on the dire situation in the newspaper industry. Note that it bears a strong resemblance to the Newsweek cover story of two weeks earlier.
2:30: Tired of reading this, look up to the big-screen TV and notice layoff numbers marching across the scroll bar on the bottom of the screen.
2:45: Return home and resist urge to check blogs and work e-mail yet again.
3:30: Notice neighbors gathering outside on an unusually nice winter's day and decide to join them.
3:31: Am immediately asked if I still have a job. Am told that wow, the Internet must really be killing newspapers.
3:32: Explain, for the umpteen millionth time, that newspapers have more readers than ever. After all, they have some of the most-read Web sites out there. The problem is that revenue is plummeting because of the wider economy, which is wiping big advertisers off the map and also reducing the incentive for the surviving competitors to advertise. Circuit City, rest in peace. Linens-N-Things, we hardly knew ye.
3:35: Also, ill-advised corporate mergers resulting in billions of dollars of debt don't help.
4:30: Neighbor who happens to be a bankruptcy attorney joins the conversation.
4:45: After describing the potentially dire situation that could arise in our household this year, discover that my Plan A for keeping the house is not a good one. But walk away with a workable Plan B which I will not repeat here. (Attorney-client privilege, you know.)
5: Launch into the three-hour dinner-playtime-bathtime-storytime-bedtime routine. Manage to not think about layoffs for the entire three hours.
8: Sit down to watch last night's recording of the Daily Show. Jon Stewart's guest is the guy who wrote the Time article on the death of newspapers.
8:15: Curse myself for waiting until this spring to take a community college course updating my skills for a digital age, instead of taking it last year.
9: Start getting ready for bed. Have not checked blogs or e-mail in hours, and am very proud of myself.
10: Watch beginning of newscast that reports the disappearance of a 5-year-old Florida girl who was last seen when she went to bed several nights ago. Cannot keep myself from tiptoeing upstairs to check on my own 5-year-old. He is there. Economy seems to be losing its importance.
10:15: Flipping through the channels, come across a documentary about life for women and children in tribal regions of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban. Am reminded of another recent documentary about life in sub-Saharan Africa. Beginning to feel a bit foolish about obsessing over paying the bills in my cushy suburban American home.
10:30: Reading a magazine in bed, come across article on parents whose children who were swept away by the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.
10:35: Have completely let go of my misplaced concern about a layoff that hasn't yet happened and the mortgage on a house that represents more luxury than many people in the world can even imagine.
10:36: Drift off to sleep, hoping to remain asleep until the 5:45 wakeup call.
Because that's when this whole day starts over again.
Jeff and I both work in recession-eviscerated industries, so worrying about the future is not merely an intellectual exercise in our house. It's an all-out obsession, and it has a disturbing way of weaving itself in and out of virtually every moment of the day.
Think I'm exaggerating? Then pour yourself a cup of coffee, settle in for a spell and take a look at a typical day in my life. This is a day when I am off work, in recognition of the fact that soon, "off work" may be my default condition.
(Yes, this is nauseatingly self-absorbed. That's what you get for reading a blog.)
A Day in the Life of the Tenuously Employed
5:45 a.m.: Groan at the sound of bedroom door opening, knowing I'll never get back to sleep. The resident 5-year-old does not suffer fools who stay in bed past 6 a.m. (It's like having a cat, only with college tuition looming in the future.)
7:15: Finally give up on getting back to sleep, and go downstairs to what, in retrospect, will be the most satisfying part of the day: Curling up on the sofa with a strong cup of coffee and the newspaper. Please note the importance of an actual newspaper, not the Internet, in the Most Satisfying Part of the Day.
8: Begin the process of getting the child fed, toothbrushed, dressed, strapped into car seat and delivered to preschool, in what will later prove to have been the most productive 45 minutes of the day.
8:50: Upon returning home, do a quick check of industry blogs in an effort to determine whether I have been laid off. This sounds absurd, but trust me, it is not.
9:10: After 20 minutes spent scouring industry blogs with unsettling minute-by-minute announcements of job cuts and furloughs at newspapers nationwide, decide to check locally based blogs for information on my specific employer. Feel a strong need to shower afterward.
9:20: After a total of 30 minutes spent on various blogs with the result of finding about five minutes' worth of useful information, decide to access work e-mail to see if any official news on today's rumored layoffs has been disseminated. None has.
9:30: Convince myself that a quick check of Facebook actually constitutes a productive use of my time. Networking, you know.
10:00: Finally finish reading various friends' "25 Random Things" lists, all the while patting myself on the back for the fact that my own "Random Things" list is far more witty and erudite than theirs.
10:01: Realize that I have just associated the words "witty" and "erudite" with the "Random Things" fad, and feel a moment of shame. Then I recall this fad's true value: the spawning of countless spoofs -- many of which are, indeed, witty and erudite. Click here for a good one.
10:02: Realize that I have 28 minutes to get to my son's preschool Valentine's Day party, for which I have been assigned to bring "healthy snacks," as opposed to "fun snacks." This further verifies my status as World's Least-Fun Mom.
10:28: While dashing out the door with aforementioned healthy snacks in hand, recall reading somewhere that careers in education are considered among the most recession-proof.
10:30: Shortly before entering classroom, begin to consider a career change to early childhood education.
10:31: Rethink career change to early childhood education.
10:35: Completely abandon plans for career change to early childhood education.
11:30: Arrive home with sugar-crazed 5-year-old and a week's supply of sweet treats. Begin lunch process, which boils down to fixing, coaxing, threatening, bribing and cleanup.
12:15: Check industry blogs yet again. Read much talk of plans for unpaid furloughs industry-wide.
12:20: Contemplate the phrase "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic." Wonder if anyone actually did this. Don't recall seeing it in the movie.
12:25: Take time to appreciate the value of the Titanic in providing a framework for countless analogies throughout the remainder of the 20th century and into the 21st. Recall headline in "history" book by the great folks at The Onion: "World's Largest Metaphor Hits Ice-berg."
12:30: Realize that only 30 minutes past noon, I have already spent far more time online today than reading the newspaper.
12:31: Perish the thought.
12:35: Spend several minutes contemplating how much garish wallpaper I could remove from my home on a furlough week. Realize that at my home-improvement rate, very little would actually get done. But if I'm laid off until the economy is expected to turn around (fourth quarter of 2010), I might get the downstairs bathroom and the dining room finished.
12:45: Load child into car and head to Very Large Upscale Health Club that I really can't afford but belong to anyway.
2:00: Notice, not for the first time, the number of working-age men at the club in the middle of a weekday afternoon. Can't help but wonder how many of them are here because they have recently lost their jobs.
2:05: Vow to myself not to continue paying Very Large Upscale Health Club membership if anyone in my house loses a job.
2:15: While on cardio machines, read Time magazine cover story on the dire situation in the newspaper industry. Note that it bears a strong resemblance to the Newsweek cover story of two weeks earlier.
2:30: Tired of reading this, look up to the big-screen TV and notice layoff numbers marching across the scroll bar on the bottom of the screen.
2:45: Return home and resist urge to check blogs and work e-mail yet again.
3:30: Notice neighbors gathering outside on an unusually nice winter's day and decide to join them.
3:31: Am immediately asked if I still have a job. Am told that wow, the Internet must really be killing newspapers.
3:32: Explain, for the umpteen millionth time, that newspapers have more readers than ever. After all, they have some of the most-read Web sites out there. The problem is that revenue is plummeting because of the wider economy, which is wiping big advertisers off the map and also reducing the incentive for the surviving competitors to advertise. Circuit City, rest in peace. Linens-N-Things, we hardly knew ye.
3:35: Also, ill-advised corporate mergers resulting in billions of dollars of debt don't help.
4:30: Neighbor who happens to be a bankruptcy attorney joins the conversation.
4:45: After describing the potentially dire situation that could arise in our household this year, discover that my Plan A for keeping the house is not a good one. But walk away with a workable Plan B which I will not repeat here. (Attorney-client privilege, you know.)
5: Launch into the three-hour dinner-playtime-bathtime-storytime-bedtime routine. Manage to not think about layoffs for the entire three hours.
8: Sit down to watch last night's recording of the Daily Show. Jon Stewart's guest is the guy who wrote the Time article on the death of newspapers.
8:15: Curse myself for waiting until this spring to take a community college course updating my skills for a digital age, instead of taking it last year.
9: Start getting ready for bed. Have not checked blogs or e-mail in hours, and am very proud of myself.
10: Watch beginning of newscast that reports the disappearance of a 5-year-old Florida girl who was last seen when she went to bed several nights ago. Cannot keep myself from tiptoeing upstairs to check on my own 5-year-old. He is there. Economy seems to be losing its importance.
10:15: Flipping through the channels, come across a documentary about life for women and children in tribal regions of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban. Am reminded of another recent documentary about life in sub-Saharan Africa. Beginning to feel a bit foolish about obsessing over paying the bills in my cushy suburban American home.
10:30: Reading a magazine in bed, come across article on parents whose children who were swept away by the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.
10:35: Have completely let go of my misplaced concern about a layoff that hasn't yet happened and the mortgage on a house that represents more luxury than many people in the world can even imagine.
10:36: Drift off to sleep, hoping to remain asleep until the 5:45 wakeup call.
Because that's when this whole day starts over again.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Death by a thousand cuts
Anybody need a copy editor?
You're probably shaking your head right now, thinking, What exactly is a copy editor, and why would I need one? I have spellcheck!
Well, if you're one of the countless people who, as you are placing the order for your Christmas cards this year, find yourself merrily typing an apostrophe in your surname, as in "Happy Holidays from the Smith's," then you indeed need a copy editor. I'm not even going to get into the geeky grammatical explanation of why that apostrophe is Just. Plain. Wrong. You'll have to trust me on this one.
The reason I'm wondering whether anyone needs a copy editor is simple: Today is yet another Layoff Day at my newspaper. (Layoff days, in my world, are sort of like wars. Once they become a recurring event, they get uppercase, proper noun treatment.)
So here I sit, wondering whether I have dodged the ax yet again. (This would be the fourth time this year, for those of you keeping track at home.) I'm cautiously optimistic, based on the fact that the e-mail announcing this round of bloodshed was sent at 12:32 p.m. and stated that nearly all affected employees already had been informed. It is now 3:50 p.m. -- no one has called, and an e-mail exchange with my immediate supervisor (who may or may not actually know) seems to indicate that I am safe once again.
As usual, the best source of information is the blogosphere (now THERE'S a sentence I never thought I'd write!). Local media gossip blogs, which have been amazingly accurate through round after round of these layoffs, have posted a list of those who have been let go. Some of the names were expected, some are stunning, some are sad (Would YOU lay off an employee who had worked nights, weekends and holidays for you for several decades and whose wife has recently been diagnosed with cancer? Well, then, you are not cut out for management!).
So here I sit, waiting and wondering and possibly sealing my eventual fate with sentences like those at the end of the paragraph above. If you're one of my bosses, trust me when I say that I'm NOT talking about you personally. I'm talking about the whole corporate machinery that builds up people and products and services, then cannibalizes itself in a desperate attempt to undo the damage wrought by macroeconomic forces and its own bad decisions.
Then gives its top executives multimillion-dollar golden parachutes.
You and I are both victims. But at least for now (4 p.m. Central, and the phone is still silent!), my name is not on the list. I hope yours isn't, either.
You're probably shaking your head right now, thinking, What exactly is a copy editor, and why would I need one? I have spellcheck!
Well, if you're one of the countless people who, as you are placing the order for your Christmas cards this year, find yourself merrily typing an apostrophe in your surname, as in "Happy Holidays from the Smith's," then you indeed need a copy editor. I'm not even going to get into the geeky grammatical explanation of why that apostrophe is Just. Plain. Wrong. You'll have to trust me on this one.
The reason I'm wondering whether anyone needs a copy editor is simple: Today is yet another Layoff Day at my newspaper. (Layoff days, in my world, are sort of like wars. Once they become a recurring event, they get uppercase, proper noun treatment.)
So here I sit, wondering whether I have dodged the ax yet again. (This would be the fourth time this year, for those of you keeping track at home.) I'm cautiously optimistic, based on the fact that the e-mail announcing this round of bloodshed was sent at 12:32 p.m. and stated that nearly all affected employees already had been informed. It is now 3:50 p.m. -- no one has called, and an e-mail exchange with my immediate supervisor (who may or may not actually know) seems to indicate that I am safe once again.
As usual, the best source of information is the blogosphere (now THERE'S a sentence I never thought I'd write!). Local media gossip blogs, which have been amazingly accurate through round after round of these layoffs, have posted a list of those who have been let go. Some of the names were expected, some are stunning, some are sad (Would YOU lay off an employee who had worked nights, weekends and holidays for you for several decades and whose wife has recently been diagnosed with cancer? Well, then, you are not cut out for management!).
So here I sit, waiting and wondering and possibly sealing my eventual fate with sentences like those at the end of the paragraph above. If you're one of my bosses, trust me when I say that I'm NOT talking about you personally. I'm talking about the whole corporate machinery that builds up people and products and services, then cannibalizes itself in a desperate attempt to undo the damage wrought by macroeconomic forces and its own bad decisions.
Then gives its top executives multimillion-dollar golden parachutes.
You and I are both victims. But at least for now (4 p.m. Central, and the phone is still silent!), my name is not on the list. I hope yours isn't, either.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
The plot thickens
Once again, my job situation is precarious.
Those of you keeping score at home may recall that my company, which has been hemorrhaging red ink in much the same way all other companies in my industry are (when's the last time YOU sat down to savor a newspaper in print form?), had a round of layoffs a mere eight weeks ago.
Round Two (or is it Round 3? I've lost track.) is upon us, and my job category is widely suspected to be squarely in the middle of the chopping block -- just as I had finally arranged for hours that would keep me sane, give me sleep and keep at least a small paycheck coming in.
We received notice this morning that we are to meet with our executive editor at 5 p.m. Monday. Needless to say, this will make it somewhat challenging to devote our usual diligence to our jobs throughout the weekend. So I'm damn glad I'm going to the Springsteen concert Sunday night, rather than doing my usual Sunday night gig of presiding over the production of a newspaper whose staff morale is sinking fast and could hit bottom on Monday at about, oh, 5:03 p.m.
So, Bruce, I'm counting on you. Bring out all those angsty songs that you churned out with such fervor in the 1970s, before you made your first gazillion dollars, when your audience could still believe you knew what it was like to be in that darkness on the edge of town.
Those of you keeping score at home may recall that my company, which has been hemorrhaging red ink in much the same way all other companies in my industry are (when's the last time YOU sat down to savor a newspaper in print form?), had a round of layoffs a mere eight weeks ago.
Round Two (or is it Round 3? I've lost track.) is upon us, and my job category is widely suspected to be squarely in the middle of the chopping block -- just as I had finally arranged for hours that would keep me sane, give me sleep and keep at least a small paycheck coming in.
We received notice this morning that we are to meet with our executive editor at 5 p.m. Monday. Needless to say, this will make it somewhat challenging to devote our usual diligence to our jobs throughout the weekend. So I'm damn glad I'm going to the Springsteen concert Sunday night, rather than doing my usual Sunday night gig of presiding over the production of a newspaper whose staff morale is sinking fast and could hit bottom on Monday at about, oh, 5:03 p.m.
So, Bruce, I'm counting on you. Bring out all those angsty songs that you churned out with such fervor in the 1970s, before you made your first gazillion dollars, when your audience could still believe you knew what it was like to be in that darkness on the edge of town.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Exit strategy
I didn't get laid off last week.
For most people, that would be reason to celebrate. And, given our financial situation, it is.
But only to a point.
I'm exhausted, you see. I go to work at 4 or 5 p.m. and arrive home long after midnight. I go to bed as quickly as possible after arriving home and, if I'm lucky, I can get a little more than five hours of sleep before the stirrings of a morning-oriented household, as well as my morning-oriented circadian rhythm, pull me back to consciousness. Then the daily schedule swings into action, and I'm staggering through another day on autopilot, snapping at Elijah for little things, zoning out at 65 mph on the interstate and feeling my health decline in ways big and small.
It's been this way for five years now, ever since I made a vow that the little bundle of joy and demands in my arms would never spend one second in institutional child care while in his infancy or toddlerhood. Hence, the need to work nights so I could be home with him during the day. Over these past five years, I've had several cardiac episodes that ended with an ER doctor, peering at my test results, asking me when I intended to start getting enough sleep and cutting down on the staggering amount of caffeine it takes to get me from 8 a.m. one day through 1 a.m. the next day.
I've even taken heat from a dermatologist when I had the nerve to ask why, after decades of relatively healthy skin, I'm suddenly getting precancerous lesions everywhere. (This is despite my dedicated use of sunscreens so powerful that until recently, they weren't even approved by the FDA -- thanks, online Canadian pharmacies, for your skin-protection assistance!) He looked at me carefully and said something along these lines: "I can tell you're not getting much sleep. Our immune systems are constantly fighting off cancer throughout our bodies, and sleep and exercise are the most important factors in healthy immune system functioning. And remember, not all early stage cancers are as easy to spot as skin cancer."
The lecture went on, but you get the idea.
That brings us to June 16, the day my employer laid off more than 1,400 people across the company, 120 of them at my workplace. Since another lovely facet of my job is that I work weekends, I was home on that dark Monday and thankfully missed a pretty grim scene. We lost some good people, some VERY good people, and those of us remaining are acutely aware of how fortunate we were to escape the ax. But given that our industry is sinking and sinking fast, we know our time is limited.
That's the day I decided to formulate my exit strategy. I must admit that it's not much of a strategy, but here it is: Get all debt except the mortgage paid off. Switch our family health insurance coverage to Jeff's employer. And pounce on the next buyout offer (expected late this year or early next year) with a vengeance.
In case you're wondering exactly what it is that I do, let me refer you to a fellow journalist (at another newspaper) whom I've always admired and who sums it up quite nicely here:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/19/AR2008061902920.html
Is it too soon to write the obituary on newspapers? Maybe. But given my current state of exhaustion, I'm ready for my own chance to rest in peace.
For most people, that would be reason to celebrate. And, given our financial situation, it is.
But only to a point.
I'm exhausted, you see. I go to work at 4 or 5 p.m. and arrive home long after midnight. I go to bed as quickly as possible after arriving home and, if I'm lucky, I can get a little more than five hours of sleep before the stirrings of a morning-oriented household, as well as my morning-oriented circadian rhythm, pull me back to consciousness. Then the daily schedule swings into action, and I'm staggering through another day on autopilot, snapping at Elijah for little things, zoning out at 65 mph on the interstate and feeling my health decline in ways big and small.
It's been this way for five years now, ever since I made a vow that the little bundle of joy and demands in my arms would never spend one second in institutional child care while in his infancy or toddlerhood. Hence, the need to work nights so I could be home with him during the day. Over these past five years, I've had several cardiac episodes that ended with an ER doctor, peering at my test results, asking me when I intended to start getting enough sleep and cutting down on the staggering amount of caffeine it takes to get me from 8 a.m. one day through 1 a.m. the next day.
I've even taken heat from a dermatologist when I had the nerve to ask why, after decades of relatively healthy skin, I'm suddenly getting precancerous lesions everywhere. (This is despite my dedicated use of sunscreens so powerful that until recently, they weren't even approved by the FDA -- thanks, online Canadian pharmacies, for your skin-protection assistance!) He looked at me carefully and said something along these lines: "I can tell you're not getting much sleep. Our immune systems are constantly fighting off cancer throughout our bodies, and sleep and exercise are the most important factors in healthy immune system functioning. And remember, not all early stage cancers are as easy to spot as skin cancer."
The lecture went on, but you get the idea.
That brings us to June 16, the day my employer laid off more than 1,400 people across the company, 120 of them at my workplace. Since another lovely facet of my job is that I work weekends, I was home on that dark Monday and thankfully missed a pretty grim scene. We lost some good people, some VERY good people, and those of us remaining are acutely aware of how fortunate we were to escape the ax. But given that our industry is sinking and sinking fast, we know our time is limited.
That's the day I decided to formulate my exit strategy. I must admit that it's not much of a strategy, but here it is: Get all debt except the mortgage paid off. Switch our family health insurance coverage to Jeff's employer. And pounce on the next buyout offer (expected late this year or early next year) with a vengeance.
In case you're wondering exactly what it is that I do, let me refer you to a fellow journalist (at another newspaper) whom I've always admired and who sums it up quite nicely here:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/19/AR2008061902920.html
Is it too soon to write the obituary on newspapers? Maybe. But given my current state of exhaustion, I'm ready for my own chance to rest in peace.
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