Laid off

Has today's economy affected your family? How you spend, if you go on vacation? Well, it wasn't really touching us much. Until now.

My company did their third round of layoff's on Tuesday. And, you guessed it...I was one of the not-so-lucky one's. I got the boot.

But, not just me. Last September they laid off 15 of my great co-workers. In June they laid of 2 of my co-workers and then on Tuesday, after a nice motivational e-mail from our president to ALL of our company telling us that they were beginning layoff's immediately, all but 8 of my co-workers were laid off on Tuesday morning.

It wasn't not an easy morning, let me tell ya. This is the third round of layoff's in just one year, so it's almost like everyone knows the deal. But, this time it was different. The first one last September was out of no where. So, it caught all of us off-guard and we had no idea how to take it. Then in June, same deal but it wasn't most of the department, only two people, so it was like a little smack in the face unlike a punch in the gut. Then, this one..was expected. We've all seen it coming for the past month or so, it was just a question of who, when and how bad. We knew that our particular site was in a nice downward spiral. Our projects had been cancelled and they sent out a new organizational structure chart a couple of weeks ago that conveniently left the our group here in Cincinnati out. So, that was clue number one. The a few short days later we got an e-mail saying that all of the projects that we had and were working on had been cancelled. Eww...punch number two. Then, they walked around and changed all of the locks on the doors (but said that they didn't know who had the previous locks and wanted to change them to keep track of who had what key...yea right). Then, came the e-mail at 3:30 on Monday afternoon that had ALL of us sitting in the middle of our department wondering if it was going to be that day. It wasn't. Our manager didn't even acknowledge it. So, all night Monday night I thought about it all night long, wondering if it was going to be me, or if was going to be the entire department or the entire building for that matter. Tuesday morning we came in and we had a meeting. They were disbanding the entire R&D department and only keeping 1/3 of the department and then getting rid of 2/3 of the department.

The morning sucked to be blunt. We all just sat around waiting. We quickly found out that they were meeting with the people that they were keeping first, and as the morning wore on, many of us figured it out that we were not the ones that they were keeping. They called all of us in (16 of us) and told us as a group (classy, huh?) that our positions have been eliminated and that September 25th was going to be our last day. They handed us our severance packets and sent us home.

We went to the bar.

And then to one of my co-workers house's and drank some more...and talked, vented and laughed. Rough day.

I'm not sure that it has hit me completely or not. I know that it has happened, but I think because we do have to come back here for a while that it just doesn't seem real. People are taking it how they are, and some of us are taking it okay and some of us are not taking it very well at all. It's hard for many because there are people who have been here for 30 years and this is the only job that they know and they are going to leave. And, there are people here that have their lively hoods resting on their jobs (cough cough...me) and it's sad. It's sad that a group that works so stinkin hard and get's along so well and could conquer anything that was thrown their way---and our company feels like they just didn't need us anymore. So, it sucks.

September 25 is our official last day here, but if we get all of our projects transitioned over to whoever is going to take it before then we can head on out of here. So, I'm hoping to do that before next week I can have everything done and all of my personal stuff taken home and Friday can be my last day. I will be paid up until the 25th and then I get 6 weeks of severance from there, so I have a short amount of time to find another job. I would love to take some time and spend it with my boys, but, I cannot afford to do it. So, it's job hunting time for me....which I hate.

I'm sad...I'm sad for me, and I'm sad for the 25 people in my department that lost their jobs this week. It's not fair.

It's not fair.

Where is my beer?