Another Black Tuesday
Seven months later, almost to the day, I am living through yet another Downsize.
This from the “darling” of local tech companies…the one company who, through all of the tech meltdown, kept money in the bank and the staffing rolls on the upturn. Everyone thought that if you worked for this company, you were immune to the tragic losses that have affected every company in the industry in one way or another. On Tuesday we discovered that nobody in this industry is immune.
We were called into an emergency meeting at 9 AM for a “team huddle” with our Director, at which time we were informed, “today will be a difficult day”. Words that I had heard before were being repeated now… 7 months later. As I listened to the words “head count”, “in keeping with the times”, “profitability”, it was all I could do to stand frozen in place and fend off the waves of nausea rising from deep within. There was the assurance that “we haven’t been touched”, that in reference to our department. The fact that I was not “on the chopping block” didn’t stop me from feeling that by now familiar feeling of being kicked in the stomach.
I returned to my desk by a window (I gained “seniority” in recent months, which afforded me a “room with a view”) and looked outside. The day was as bleak as it had been seven months ago. The sky was dark with clouds, and there was a chill in the air. I looked at the flag flying over the campus of buildings, thinking that they should have been lowered to half-mast. I watched as trickles of people began to flow out of the buildings in front of ours. I watched cars driving far too fast in an effort to get away as quickly as possible… as they left the campus one last time. Not just any cars either… BMW’s, SAAB’s, and any other number of “luxury” cars turned far too fast into oncoming traffic and sped hurriedly from the nightmare of the day.
I was in each and every car. I felt that “heart in the stomach” feeling that I had felt seven months ago when it was my car speeding too fast into oncoming traffic as I struggled to make my way to the safety of home through a river of tears and the shock of disbelief.
It occurred to me as I sat and stared out over the bleak landscape that I would now have another chapter to write in the “Diary of a Downsize”. This time it though, it was from the a different perspective…. That of a survivor.
Stay tuned…
