Postcards of the Hanging: (Working Life - Part I)

It’s been just over a couple of weeks, so perhaps now is a good time to talk about this. Twenty or so people at my workplace received their layoff notices. Barely a year ago about fifteen or so staff were also let go. Both moves are related parts of the same re-structuring and deemed to be necessary actions for the sake of the “business”. To use the words of my bitter and cynical co-worker who is one of the walking dead, they have been “transitioned out”. This is the terminology used in our company when staff leaves for causes unrelated to performance but instead due to “business reasons.”

The company I work is the largest in its industry and one of the most recognizable and profitable of all corporations in the world. It is consistently rated as one of the best 100 companies to work for in the U.S. and in Canada it is rated as one of the top 50. Yet in spite of this, during the four years I’ve been there, certain segments of the colleague population have had nothing but uncertainty and threat to their job security. That’s a difficult environment to work in. But, during my first two years I was positioned within one of those groups marking time, living day to day and feeling sour. That’s since been resolved for me and I no longer have these worries. But it was something I had to take into my own hands, something I had to exact myself. Two years ago I received a job offer from another company (that real estate company) which I accepted. A series of events and discussions followed, but in the end I did not leave – this company eventually persuaded me to stay (that’s what they believe).

They did not convince me to stay. They convinced me not to accept that specific offer. This is “one of the best” companies to work for, but at times it’s hard to believe because circumstances betray this. If it is true that this is one of the best, then how unbearable it must be elsewhere, what a hell it is – this working life.

When I was young and naïve, I believed job insecurity cast a dark cloud only within poor performing organizations, companies that were barely solvent, companies that had no option but to take such drastic measures to ensure their survival. How wrong I am, at least for the time being. Has it always been this way? Or is this just characteristic of the modern age? I’ve been employed by three companies in my working life. Two are rated among the best companies in Canada to work for, the third, merely a division of the largest cosmetics company in the world. By all accounts, I’ve worked for ONLY great, not merely good, but GREAT companies. Yet in each one of them, annual purging of staff was seemingly normal course. What hope is there for those in the middle-of-the-road?

Virtually everyone one I know has been laid off from a job at some point - myself, both my brothers, every single one of all my old friends from school. That’s life. I’m not so sure about my more recent friends – I’ve never asked them because I don’t make a point of talking about work anymore. I’ve discovered that no one’s really interested in my problems.

To the credit of my current employer, this round of reductions was handled in a delicate and respectful manner. This is quite a contrast to when I was laid off by four years ago by that cosmetics company. I remember the day the changes were announced, the relocation of all support functions to the US headquarters. I remember the town-hall meeting. I remember that vile fat ass who arrived from New York. I remember the presentation, his phoney charisma, his enthusiasm as he described the glorious future that was in store for the Corporation, the aggressive “positioning” that would come out of that “strategic move”. I remember the sick appalling feeling that overcame me, the disbelief that someone could so caustically describe such a utopian vision to people who only MINUTES prior, had been so causally told they would not be part of that vision.

That division is a young company. It is an astounding overnight success story. If it is possible to identify a company where people are impassioned and dedicated, it is that one. Many were with the company from the very beginning – with the two men who started up the company, and who remained out of loyalty long after those two entrepreneurs sold out to the Corporation. That’s why I hated that day, knowing that a few rows behind me there were people who had an important piece of their lives just ripped away from them.

When I started at that company, everyone I knew was very excited. More than me. Of course, I had never heard of this company because it is part of a glamorous industry and lifestyle that is completely foreign to me. For my women friends, this gave them status within their inner circles – “I have a friend who works for M-C Cosmetics!!” And my male friends were just envious – why could it not be them? Why is it Slowpoke who gets to work at such a company, one that had just had to be crawling with beautiful women? To everyone I knew, this was just too glamorous. I went from uncool to very cool.

Many of life’s superficial and untruthful elements can be found in business.

That company has a office in the heart of the Soho District in New York City. There’s another Marketing office in the Fashion District of Toronto. That’s glamorous. Back office support functions were located in a worn down, single level industrial strip mall in Markham Ontario. The parking lot was cracked and needed repairs and the building was a dive. That’s not exciting. At all. In the office many of the older staff had a hard time letting go of the old culture. The old dress code was all black attire, and while thin, young, twenty –something females at the store counters are especially hot in tight all black clothing, plump middle-aged women in the corporate office are not. That company’s niche is bright colourful product. So just imagine, women in their late forties and fifties trying to look younger than their age, using unskillfully applied bright red, blue and gold make-up and wearing sweaters and pants that are too tight. Embarrassing for them – painful for me.

With all due apologies, and to the dismay of my male “buddies” I had to announce that in the corporate office those delicious young tarts they imagined are just that, a fantasy. Of course, each off-the-cuff denial on my part served only to strengthen their conviction in this fantasy. Whatever.

The day I received my one month lay-off notice was ironically the one year anniversary with the company. It was one of the happiest days of my working life. Scary, but happy and good. Sometimes you need someone else to make those changes you need. Thirteen months of work, nineteen months of pay - started a new job the following week. I told Jack and Helen that I was going to use part of my severance money to buy a saxophone. Helen thought I hit a very pre-mature life crisis. Jack told me to stop wasting my money and to buy a computer instead. – Luckily for me, I don’t always listen to my friends.

Last week my brother accepted a job and he will be starting work again. It happened to him again last summer, and while he’s had a couple of odd assignments, it’s only now that he has something more substantial. Both my brothers work in I.T. They’re both techies. Yet amazingly, in this age of the internet and professional recruiters, one of them always chooses to look for a job the old fashioned way – sending out hard copy letters and resumes by mail. He’s proven to me again, this is the way to look for work. I’ll keep this in mind the next time it happens to me.