When I started my current job over nine years ago, I recall that there were more than seven hundred people working here and that number was growing. After the recession in 2001-2003, we were at roughly six hundred. Since then we've grown back to approximately six fifty. This, I suppose is the nature of business, to grow or shrink as the market demands.
I had never been around the new building out in front of the main office. They had installed new palm trees on the east side. A mass of familiar faces was visible through the green tinged glass curtain walls as we rounded the corner. The new patio was concrete and scored to resemble the wooden planks of a pier. Our Director stood atop a low dividing wall, speaking in his characteristic low, clear baritone.
He started with what we already knew, that we were in bad financial straits, that we were in danger of defaulting on our bond obligations, that management had explored different ways to make up the difference needed, that layoffs were necessary. In the short week, we had already come to expect that. He stumbled in his speech as he tried to tell us how many layoffs were necessary. A hundred and three. At this point his voice started to break, and I stared at the ground, not willing to watch him cry. Forty seven of the cuts would come from our Division, which currently numbers ninety two people.
So then, my fate rests on a coin flip and I won't know the final score until mid-July.
We were in the airport last Friday night when the news came in. 6:32pm to be precise. Layoffs. It seemed a cowardly hour. The early evening of a long weekend.
I've had other friends here document their trials and tribulations with layoffs or being unemployed. To be frank, I thought so highly of them that, I figured that they'd be okay. And they are, I think. But at this moment, not knowing anything for sure, I feel a certain enlightenment. It's a big deal. It's always a big deal.
In the bigger picture, we're okay. We can live on our assets and what C. makes.
Perhaps it will seem chauvinistic, but the uncertainty of my continued employment emasculates me. And then there's the feeling of ennui. What does it matter what I do today, if it is one of my final ones? I count myself intelligent enough to realize that whatever happens, it will be okay. I'd like think that I can rise above this an finish up whatever I need to finish up. You might think that's what you're supposed to do at the end of every day. Perhaps I've been too fortunate this last nine and a half years. Perhaps I'm too arrogant, believing that I'll be okay. I wonder to myself, what skills do I really have?
For most of my time here, we've had a nice lawn in front of our building, a nice communal place where people could gather, between the office and the shore. In the last year or so, a developer has been constructing a two story building where the lawn used to be. There's still a little spot of green there, withered by commercial development.
Yesterday I met with my union and volunteered to draft a letter. As we were finalizing it this morning, we were notified of an emergency meeting. 2pm, on the lawn in front of the building. A terrifying hour. The end perhaps, to a short week.