Restructuring

I went through this at a rather large company. The aftermath SUCKED, everyones workload pretty much tripled. You were expected to work extra days and overtime to compensate for the missing head count.

My advice...............

My company has been going through this for a few years now. Many heads have rolled. And like fl_project said, the aftermath comes in the form of mandatory overtime to compensate for rediculous workloads. On top of that, company morale goes to the meepter and the team suffers.

You should stop to smell the blackberries and in the meantime stay low for revenge shootings of recently sacked employees.

I have been cut twice.

It meeping sucks.

I got laid off from J. Solomon's, a turn-of-the-century-style office supply company in New London. Until I worked there, I wasn't really sure I believed in Jews -- the stereotype of them. But boy howdy. The boss man ("Rip") paid 19-year-old me $8.25 an hour to drive a van around south-eastern CT to deliver office supplies to hot office chicks. I had way more free time than you'd think while ostensibly trucking efficiently from delivery spot to delivery spot, which I capitalized on to meep in the woods and buy weed and enjoy long lunches of baguettes with hot sauce. One day I backed his van up into a concrete pylon because I was busy playing this cool new gypsy-tuned harmonica (B flat?) I had just bought instead of navigating diligently. I was forthright about it, except the harmonica part, and he tensed up and then told me to make sure it didn't happen again. The van itself was fun to drive because it was one of those really big ones and people GET THE meep OUT OF YOUR WAY, HOTSHOT.

Then one day he told me he had to let me go, cause last-hired-first-fired, and there was this big dopy chick who had been hired two hours before me who aspired to become a local volunteer firefighter, with all that that entails. I guess she got my job. She was brawny for a chick but I still wanted to see her ill-shaped meep swing those heavy boxes of paper around all day sweating into her sad stuffed bra.

I then did what anyone with a lick of sense would do at 19; I signed up for unemployment and found a job that would pay me under the table close to home. I was then getting $7 an hour (I think) to play gameboy and service local rednecks in Bozrah who used the gas station chiefly as their lifeline to the dreams promised by various lottery outfits. Some of them would buy $50 in tickets, go home, come back, buy $50 more, go home, come back -- you get the idea. I pissed in the coffee pot and avoided meeping the owner's atrocious daughter, who conveniently left a journal full of the most terrible song lyrics ever beneath the cash register. I type some for you now out of memory near-perfected by horror:

Our love will last It's deep and swift It's hard and fast like a rock-n-roll riff

Not kidding. The owner was cool, off the boat from Italy, but his stupid wife had illusions that she was going to turn the place into some kind of modern convenience store, which apparently entailed a strictly calendared regimen of me sweeping the floor in addition to my cash register duties. Not on my watch, sister. One day the unemployment office informed me they had been overpaying me to the tune of something like 65 percent, and that I would need to pay this money back come tax-time. Suitably chastened, especially as my time on the dole was just about up anyway, I went and found a job delivering pizzas for a local pizza shop where the uniforms were a kind of off-pink but I could eat all the pizza and subs I could hold. (As far as I know, they never collected on that unemployment thing.)

I then got fired many times from other jobs, always for being late. I say many times but I actually mean like 5 or 6 times. That's a lot, but I can't be on time. I still can't, so I didn't learn my lesson and those sweatshop mothermeepers can go meep self.

Then I got my first real job, and have been avoiding layoffs ever since. I worked at a huge Fortune 50 company where after half a year it became clear the handiest way to mark time was in layoff rounds, and before long the time between layoffs really came to feel like the grim calm before the storm that you just knew was coming. Maybe that's universal now, cause it sort of still rings true and I'm probably just used to the feeling. I still have avoided every round of layoffs successfully and recently was told in person by my boss, after getting the most ridiculously awesome review of my life, that I would be just about the last person in my department to get the ax if it ever came down. Which, looking back over what I've just related, sort of makes me lol in retrospect.

EDIT: It occurs to me that that first layoff, the one I was victim to, is probably the fairest one I've ever personally seen. Of the people recently laid off at my company, one was laid off for being paid too much post-merger, and the rest were laid off for exhibiting various aggravated levels of incompetence. This is fair from the business' point of view, though I question their arithmetic, because if incompetence or overpay is a sin, then there's still a lot of hellfire to hand out where I am. If you lay off the last guy you hired, who can complain?

I mean, apart from that guy, but meep him.

<span class="post_was_edited">On 2006-08-17 at 18:32:10, vasudeva wistfully remembered Bowie's codpiece in Labyrinth</span>

Yes, it was the dreaded black tuesday that everyone feared hoping that their name would not come up to be handed a pinkslip (actually they called everyone to be axed into a group meeting) which stated they were to gather all their memories and leave the premises on thursday. This weekly meep killed moral.

When I got laid off from Big Blue, we all knew it was coming about a month in advance (End of January). We were in Software Group, which BTW was the only division in IBM to show a profit in 2002, so of course it was the group to get the axe. It had been decided that Hindis halfway around the world could support IBM's beta products better than the people sitting 50 feet from the software engineers.

Anyway, On the last day of February the entire support staff was brought together and informed that as of March 31, we would no longer be employed by IBM. We were told that we would be paid through the end of March, but we we were not required to actually be at work.

It was at that point that I got up and walked out and started packing my desk. The manager that was informing us of the lay off (not our manager, but someone from another group) stopped me and said that it would be really great if I would consider continuing to come to work. I asked if doing so would alloow me to keep my job. She said no, so I laughed in her face and walked out.

It took me four months to find another job and I had to take a 10K paycut. That time period completely sucked donkey meep.

My most recent experience is where I THOUGHT I had been fired, but apparently the company that let me go considered my discharge to be a lay off. This time I am chillin.

I have seen a few "restructurings" and the big nasty undercurrent of grief and longing for meep really doesn't deserve the want that people place on it.

A job is meep. Nothing is amazingly great about it--yes, I have one and yes, I really like the money. But truth be told if I could get the same money and not do what I do, I might really consider it.

This is what happens after a lay-off, ZERO LOYALTY to the company that obviously can't handle staffing, opperations and variable cost-accounting properly. Everytime a company has to lay off workers, that means the Human Resources people meepED UP BIG TIME, that the planners, the people in charge of service/staffing/opperations made a big mistake. They bought extra labor and now they have to cut losses.

Don't work for companies that can't manage their books, even if it means starting your own consulting [read as : meep THYSELF] or staking a claim to your 40 acres and a mule.

Moral of the rant: Don't think they owe you anything and don't think you owe them anything. If they are meepups, why are you there? Fire them before they fire you.

Been off work for almost 5 months. I have over 12 years experience in my field and have only ever worked for two employers. I have excellent references... but it's not looking good. Things are getting a little tight, but luckily I have side work (PC repair) coming it to help with the bills.

It's meeping ugly out there in Michigan.

It's weird, but I've never been fired/laid off. I have jumped the gun on a few firings though, usually quitting in a blaze of glory.

The most memorable was when I quit a grocery store when I was 17, I stole the mountain dew prizebike on my way out the door, then I got nervous about it and ditched it 3 days later.

IMBOLCPunxsutawneyPhil: Fire them before they fire you.

meep that meeps sir.

How can love be swift? And if it were swift, how could it possibly avoid being fast? And is that a good thing? Ponder, my friends, ponder.

I've journaled about my last 15-month jobless streak, the financial repercussions of which I still feel to this day--even though I've found a new meep job. I check the obits of the Allentown Morning Call regularly, hoping to see the death notice of the vile hospital CEO that caused my family so much anguish (he would now be about 79 years old). On the day I see it, dear friends, I will drink deeply and with a glad heart. My wife and I have also made a solemn pact to drive to Allentown at some point to meep/meep on his grave.

pics please.

Back in 2001, as the bubble was bursting (exactly as I had been predicting for 15 months), I actually had a job down-sized out from under me DURING THE INTERVIEW.

I meep you not. I was busy telling the guy all about my greatest weakness (I work too hard... blah blah blah), and his phone rings. He excuses himself apologetically from the office and is gone for 6 or 7 minutes. Upon his return I was informed sheepishly that the position I was interviewing for (and I will never forget these words) "no longer existed".

Man am I glad I didn't ever have work for that POS company.

LORDKAHUNA:

IMBOLCPunxsutawneyPhil: Fire them before they fire you.

meep that meeps sir.

poobah!

if they can't keep a tight ship then there might be better captains to be had. I would at the very least advise to have your options open. who are your regional competitors, what are they doing that doesn't put them in the same situation?

I don't understand it exactly but my sense of humor usually gets me fired before I get laid off.

Oddly enough, I actually came to benefit from the downsizing of a dot com before they closed their doors. About 7 years ago I picked up a job as phone support for a small company. Being a natural geek with an inclination to the tech side of things, they made me the tech support guy to call whenever a customer had website woes. After about 5 months at this company, lack of profits/investment caused a major downsizing in which about 20 employees were let go (there was only about 45 employees total). And due to my skillz I was branded into 2 positions at the company, Technical Phone Support and Assistant Network Admin. Of course I received no extra compensation at this time, but I still had my job so I meagerly accepted my fate and worked anyway.

The company limped along for another year or so before an investor foreclosed on the company assets and did they're own restructuring. At this point they offered me my position at the new restructured company which I offhandedly manipulated into a full IT position with total neglect for any phone support duties. The company did well for the next 2 years before their shady practices got them landed in hot water with the state's attorney general and the business was shut down.

At this point I figured I was screwed with only psuedo IT skillz and not much hope of getting anything but phone support again. However it turns out that I landed a couple consulting gigs in just a couple of weeks and then got a full time position less than a month later. Apparently my skills are better than most Network Admins currently looking for work. Anyhow, I've come to find that the my current employer really sucks and that I'd rather just consult full time. So I'm doing a half meep attempt at "Office Space"ing my work, in hopes of being let go and having a chance of reaping unemployment benefits that I've so lovingly contributed to over the years.

I made a 4 hour daily commute (1 1/2 hours up and 2 1/2 back) for 6 months, only to be laid off on a monday morning, AFTER the meeps let me drive all the way in to work at 4:30 am...and after telling me that my job was secure.

coknurmowth: I made a 4 hour daily commute (1 1/2 hours up and 2 1/2 back) for 6 months, only to be laid off on a monday morning, AFTER the meeps let me drive all the way in to work at 4:30 am...and after telling me that my job was secure.

why did it take a extra hour to get back?

<span class="post_was_edited">On 2006-08-24 at 01:47:54, wolfer wistfully remembered Bowie's codpiece in Labyrinth</span>

Rush hour traffic in the afternoon?

He had to pedal uphill all the way home

No but I got fired from a flower shop for being perpetually late, does that count??