Real Life at the Office (After a Recession)

Photo credit: sun dazed (Flickr.com)

Somewhere in the office, a phone is ringing. But no one is answering it.

I stare at my computer screen and sigh. Last year, there were twenty five of us. We voluntarily put a freeze on raises and bonuses so that we wouldn’t be forced to let three of those people go. At the time, spirits were high. We were going to get through this thing together.

But in March, Joe in Customer Support and Fawn in Marketing both vanished. No one knew why. Neither of them had been doing that great of work lately; we’d all suspected they were having an affair together. The rumor was that they had been fired for having sex in the office and getting caught by the building custodians. Nobody knew, of course, if it was true.

One Friday in June, Bill and Jack and Chloe from sales got called into a meeting. They never came back. Our office manager, JoAnne, packed up their belongings in copy paper boxes and took them out. The sales team was getting nervous. Chloe and Bill were the most recent additions to the team, and it made sense to let them go, but Jack had been with the company for seventeen years. If he could get fired, no one was safe.

In August, department managers met with senior management from the home office and were asked to consider who else we could lose. It was a bad year for our company, and we had to slash overhead to keep our shareholders from turning on us. They asked us to prioritize our departments and to rank our employees from most essential to least essential. It was a given that department managers were the most essential, so our own names stayed off the lists. We handed them in, and they excused us. One by one, seven employees were called in. Four did not return. JoAnne, once again, gathered up their belongings.

When the news broke that raises and bonuses would be on freeze again, Fred in Accounts Receivable left not long after. Word was that he’d found a better job for a small business as their in-house accountant. We wished him well.

And so I sit here now in this bleak and cold January, looking out at the sea of empty desks, listening as another phone that no one will answer begins to ring. Our skeleton crew has clung to this sinking ship, hoping that we will weather the storm and escape with our lives. They have told us that a sale of the company is pending, and that if we’re acquired, our money troubles will be over, and raises and bonuses will come back. We have toiled for months under these promises, but we have learned that when we begin to hear the phrase, “business as usual,” it means that something even more drastic is about to happen.

We all used to watch that sitcom about the people at the paper company, and we found it funny at first because it reflected our lives so closely. But the people on the show still have jobs, even though they’re incompetent and barely do any actual work. The show has turned into a cruel parody of what we’re enduring. The slacker salesman gets promoted and gets to marry the redhead and start a family. In our office, our best salesman is losing accounts as companies go under. His wife has already left him, and he’s come to work drunk twice in the last month. Everyone’s talking about him behind his back, because we’ve all painted a target there for the upper management to see — when they’re ready to trim again, we want them to take him, and not us, even though we all know that losing his job will completely destroy him.

I hate myself for what I’ve become. But I rationalize it by reminding myself that at least I have a job. Camaraderie is a luxury for good times. Survival is the name of the game during a recession.

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Writing Scraps | SeanJJordan | January 3, 2010 12:26 am

4 Comments

By Randy Nichols, January 3, 2010 @ 11:29 am

I’ve been reading along for a while now. I just wanted to drop you a comment to say keep up the good work.
By Sue Massey, January 3, 2010 @ 11:30 am

You know, I have to tell you, I really enjoy this blog and the insight from everyone who participates. I find it to be refreshing and very informative. I wish there were more blogs like it. Anyway, I felt it was about time I posted, I?ve spent most of my time here just lurking and reading, but today for some reason I just felt compelled to say this.
By Stacie, January 3, 2010 @ 10:58 pm

Ok, this was a great little bit of writing that most can relate to. Should be interesting to see what happens after this!
By Harold, January 4, 2010 @ 6:10 pm

So this is what people are talking about – now of all times… I guess it could be worse, i dunno

Writing Scraps

by Sean J. Jordan