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After a truly wonderful backpacking weekend, I'm back to work.
Last week just about half of the people in any kind of management position here were out for vacation. In fact, for people in one group, their entire chain of command except the CEO of the company was gone! Well, some of those folks are back now, although now my boss is out.
Usually people are cheerful when a less-than-pleasant boss is gone. I'm not, really. (For one thing, my boss isn't unpleasant.) I'm looking at the management structure here and wondering just what kind of message they're sending. Clearly when an entire chain is gone at once, that says something about those managers' level of emotional investment in the company and in their teams.
I wonder how many of them are looking for other jobs...
So I'm puttering about, doing a few things that clearly needed to get done but which weren't blazingly critical. I don't have anything specifically on my plate. I really don't do well when I'm not busy. It's one thing to have some free time; it's quite another to show up at work and sit there for eight hours with not a whole lot to do. If my boss were in, this would be the third time in about two weeks that I've run out of things to do and pestered him to give me more.
It's not the first time I've envied the people who got laid off a few weeks ago. They don't show up at work only to pick their noses for eight hours. They go on vacations, they garden, they tackle home projects. They have severance packages the likes of which I wish I could someday see. Some of them won't bother looking for work until November. I do admit that I would have felt pretty unhappy at first if I'd been laid off. Emotionally it's like a slap in the face. But maybe by now I'd be over it. :-)
I guess the obvious question is why I'm not out looking for a new job. Part of it is laziness. The job hunt is stressful in a GOOD economy; now, it would truly suck. Part of it is ties with the people here. I like my coworkers and would miss them. And part of it is that I'm burned out. I haven't had a vacation in far too long. If you don't count family obligations, I haven't had a vacation since I started this job. I need one. Looking for a new job wouldn't give me one.
I was just reading a NYTimes article about a company that was folding (filing Chapter 11). All the employees had been on a week-long enforced vacation, as a cost-cutting measure, and then they were notified by phone tree not to bother coming back. Ouch. There can be no severance packages or even continuance of health benefits, because the company's assets are tied up until bankruptcy proceedings are through. Double ouch. And the market for these folks is incredibly bad, so many of them won't be able to get new jobs any time soon. Triple ouch. The employees that had been let go in January from this same place got severance packages and benefits... and may have new jobs by now. The current batch of folks is a bit shell-shocked, and I can't blame them. It's ironic that the first wave of layoffs - with, one might think, the least-"valued" workers - always gets the biggest wad of cash and seems to be released into a better job market than subsequent groups.
So anyway. I guess I wish I were still out backpacking. :-)
Last week just about half of the people in any kind of management position here were out for vacation. In fact, for people in one group, their entire chain of command except the CEO of the company was gone! Well, some of those folks are back now, although now my boss is out.
Usually people are cheerful when a less-than-pleasant boss is gone. I'm not, really. (For one thing, my boss isn't unpleasant.) I'm looking at the management structure here and wondering just what kind of message they're sending. Clearly when an entire chain is gone at once, that says something about those managers' level of emotional investment in the company and in their teams.
I wonder how many of them are looking for other jobs...
So I'm puttering about, doing a few things that clearly needed to get done but which weren't blazingly critical. I don't have anything specifically on my plate. I really don't do well when I'm not busy. It's one thing to have some free time; it's quite another to show up at work and sit there for eight hours with not a whole lot to do. If my boss were in, this would be the third time in about two weeks that I've run out of things to do and pestered him to give me more.
It's not the first time I've envied the people who got laid off a few weeks ago. They don't show up at work only to pick their noses for eight hours. They go on vacations, they garden, they tackle home projects. They have severance packages the likes of which I wish I could someday see. Some of them won't bother looking for work until November. I do admit that I would have felt pretty unhappy at first if I'd been laid off. Emotionally it's like a slap in the face. But maybe by now I'd be over it. :-)
I guess the obvious question is why I'm not out looking for a new job. Part of it is laziness. The job hunt is stressful in a GOOD economy; now, it would truly suck. Part of it is ties with the people here. I like my coworkers and would miss them. And part of it is that I'm burned out. I haven't had a vacation in far too long. If you don't count family obligations, I haven't had a vacation since I started this job. I need one. Looking for a new job wouldn't give me one.
I was just reading a NYTimes article about a company that was folding (filing Chapter 11). All the employees had been on a week-long enforced vacation, as a cost-cutting measure, and then they were notified by phone tree not to bother coming back. Ouch. There can be no severance packages or even continuance of health benefits, because the company's assets are tied up until bankruptcy proceedings are through. Double ouch. And the market for these folks is incredibly bad, so many of them won't be able to get new jobs any time soon. Triple ouch. The employees that had been let go in January from this same place got severance packages and benefits... and may have new jobs by now. The current batch of folks is a bit shell-shocked, and I can't blame them. It's ironic that the first wave of layoffs - with, one might think, the least-"valued" workers - always gets the biggest wad of cash and seems to be released into a better job market than subsequent groups.
So anyway. I guess I wish I were still out backpacking. :-)
