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Layoff stories
I’m a reporter, so stories are my bread and butter, and I want to hear some of yours.
Yesterday one of the country’s major news corporations, Gannett, announced massive layoffs at its papers. Before coming to WORLD, I was at The Indianapolis Star, which was one of Gannett’s papers that lost 54 employees yesterday, several of them people I worked closely with there. The people I know didn’t lose their jobs because of incompetence, but because a percentage of employees just had to be cut.
I know this experience is not just common to the news industry now, but to every industry.
One of the reporters there gave an excellent, though wrenching, account of his experience getting the pink slip yesterday:
The first few minutes after you get back from HR on the 6th floor are interesting. Everyone can see the gray folder in your hand, and some people start avoiding eye contact. Most, though, soon approach and offer their condolences. Not a few hugs are exchanged. Our theater and classical music writer, an absolute workhorse who gave me a very classy goodbye, soon got the call himself. He had to take a minute and down some caffeine before going up.
My last act as an employee was to call an author I’d scheduled an interview with next week to cancel. I’d been pursuing that source for the better part of a year, dropping off materials for her to read and calling every few weeks to convince her to sit down. My persistence paid off and I was finally going to nail the interview, but now it’ll never happen. She reminded me not to forget to return the two books she’d loaned me to read.
A writer? I never considered myself as such. I am a newspaperman. Well, I was. I don’t know what I am now. In this market, I know what my chances are of landing another newspaper gig. I have to face that this is probably the end of my journalism career — it goes without saying that I am not ready.
But there are hundreds of us today, thousands. My story is not special. But I still wanted to tell it, because that’s what I do. Did.
Do any of you have recent layoff stories, either from your own experience or those of friends? I’m not asking for grumbling about the economy, but simply human stories about this experience, which is becoming increasingly common.
back to top16 Comments to “Layoff stories”
Without going into the painful details of how I left the full-time ministry…let me tell you there are not many jobs for ex-preachers. I was fully unemployed for three months, worked temp jobs for three, as a contract employee for ten. It was only by the grace of a good friend, ex-parishioner that I got a job as a temperature controls technician, a field in which I had no experience and little interest. The best I could do at selling myself was that if a guy with a biology degree could teach himself Greek before seminary, I think I could do this job.
Since then, I have done my best at making myself valuable to the company. I believe I have made modest success at that by progressing from tech to programming to engineering to project management.
But I have not forgotten those very dark and hard months wondering, wondering.
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Now they all have that long-awaited opportunity to go back for that PhD. Or start/finish the novel they always wanted to write.
For many years I labored with the illusion that some professions were fields no one ever got laid-off from, but not any more. I know a Masters-prepared engineer. He learned of his firing when he was no longer able to log-in at this desk computer. “Have I been let go?” “Why, yes you have. I’m sorry.”
And I doubt the newspapers paid these folks anything near as nice as the Golden Parachutes provided to the execs from Fannie/Freddie
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Not as recent, but I was laid off during the economic downturn in 2001. Despite my job in IT, I wasn’t escorted to the door or even stripped of computer access privileges. They gave me a few days notice and I kept working until the end of the week, trying to finish up what I’d been working on. My manager made it very clear to me that he had no say in the matter, that he would never have agreed to the decision if he did have any say. No one at our division would have picked me to be cut because they needed the work I did. But the bean counters at the corporate office decided we didn’t need two people in IT, and I had less seniority (by about nine months).
I was surprisingly (to myself) upbeat about it. I was tired of driving an hour to work, especially with the lake effect snow we got all winter. I loved the company and the job, and had said on a company survey that the only thing I would want to change was how far I had to drive to work. Now that I wouldn’t have to anymore, I was sure God must have a purpose for it, some other job I was needed for closer to home. I called my husband with the news, and he told me that his secretary had just given her notice, and I could fill in for her starting the following week. I would have done it for nothing, just to help out the church (my husband was the pastor) and to be busy doing something useful, but the Session agreed to hire me at the same rate of pay as the previous secretary.
It was only part-time, and paid an hourly wage a third of what I had been making as a programmer. So I kept looking, and after six months got a part-time job as bank teller (making a third again as much as I had as church secretary). And my husband got a wonderful new secretary who is still there, even though he isn’t anymore.
While I worked at the bank, the company I had worked for called me and asked me to come in to do some contract work, because the other IT guy couldn’t get everything done. I also started doing some computer work for the local Habitat for Humanity chapter. The director and I talked about their situation and mine, and she offered me a full-time job. I was all ready to accept it, and told the manager where I was doing the contract work that I wouldn’t be available anymore. The next day he offered me the job of the other IT guy. After much thought and prayer, I accepted it (and the other guy was fired – he took it very well because he knew he wasn’t meeting expectations, and he found a job he liked and was better suited for), and had another couple good years there before we moved away.
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JSingletary,
I don’t remember if we’ve swapped stories before, but my husband also started off in biology, then quit his job to go to seminary, became a full-time pastor, and has a painful story of why he is not anymore. And he has had a very hard time finding other jobs. He worked as a temp at two different companies, and finally was hired as case picker in a warehouse, third shift. He was recently promoted to shift supervisor there, where he is finally able to use his leadership skills somewhat.
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No Pauline, we’ve not swapped stories but if you’d like to…jsingletary@hughes.net.
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“The people I know didn’t lose their jobs because of incompetence, but because a percentage of employees just had to be cut”
Good companies don’t work that way. They rank their employees and when cuts are necessary they start with the least capable ones. In every organization, there are people who are just cruising and not trying to make a contribution. It would be a shame if one of them was allowed to stay on when other less selfish people got cut.
The exception, of course, is when an entire office or division is eliminated.
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I posted on Whirled Views first thing this morning about my employer laying off most of the shop help. I was not among 11 or so laid off, but it may be right around the corner if things do not improve drastically in the next few weeks. The housing sector is just dead in the water…
However, I do have a marketable set of skills that is adaptable, and I’m already compiling a list of places to begin the job search should the need arise. I suppose it’s nothing to be proud of, but in my 26+ years of employment, I’ve had 16 or so jobs. The good thing is that I’ve only been out of work a few weeks total during that time. And one of those weeks, I took off on purpose just to get a breather. So if I know how to do anything, it’s find a job. Of course I don’t really want to do that right now… I love my job, and don’t want to let it go.
I should tell my boss that he has to wait til my birthday in May to let me go. It’s traditional. I’ve been laid off on my birthday so many times that it’s almost funny….
However, I was sad for all of my co-workers today. One of them was let go on his birthday yesterday. What a Christmas present. No need to ask about the Christmas party or the bonus. It’s more appropriate to ask if we’ll have any work in the next couple of weeks.
Or.. go beat the bushes for it. We need to find opportunities opening up and take advantage of it. When businesses fold, it usually means those customers have to find other places to buy….
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On the ides of September we had our weekly workflow meeting and my bosses announced that we would all need to take a 10% paycut. They said that they had already cut their own salaries, but that now we would all need to make do with a smaller paycheck effective immediately.
By the ides of October on a bright Monday morning I was called into our meeting room (the kitchen), and I knew what was coming because the three chairs were set up that are set up for when we had our evaluations.
I had been praying for wisdom to know if I should quit because I thought it would be good to get done with school and simultaneously study to get ready for the PE (professional engineers) exam. But, I had been memorizing Psalm 62 and the main idea that I was trying to live out from that passage was being content with where God placed me and resting in Him rather than trying to change the circumstances myself. Needless to say God made it abundantly clear what my focus needs to be on now!
I had two bosses who were completely equal. The boss that told me I was going to be laid off was shaking when he gave me all the paperwork I needed regarding the IRA and health insurance. They wrote me a letter of recommendation and stated in the letter that I was being laid off because their big projects were put off or on hold. I asked if I should finish the day or leave right away–right away.
My two former bosses started the company four years ago, and there were six of us total. I was one of two that were laid off. Now there are four.
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Several years ago, when I was manager of a small (less than 10 people) office of a publishing company, I received by e-mail the paperwork for completing employee evaluations. I was struck by the fact that the salary column for each employee included the word “TERM” after April of that year. When I made some joke about it to the HR director over the phone (our office was in Maine, the head office out in the Midwest), she assured me that everything was fine and I just needed to get the evaluations done by whatever the deadline was. I was not reassured but kept my thoughts to myself.
So it was not a complete surprise, a month or so later, to have a conference call with the HR director and the company president telling me that our whole department was being eliminated. But I had to sit on that information for about six weeks, even going to a publishers’ meeting in DC and talking to clients as if we were going to meet their needs in June of that year, when I knew very well that no one would be working in my office past the end of April.
The HR director and president flew to Maine for a meeting with all the employees, and didn’t want me to tell anyone why we were having the meeting, but I insisted on breaking the news myself before they arrived in the office. Not a pretty scene, as I recall, but probably better than if the out-of-town corporate folks had been the ones to tell them.
God’s hand of providence was at work through every detail of that messy, uncomfortable spring. But it still was messy and uncomfortable!
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I wonder how Phil Fulmer and Tommy Tuberville will handle it?
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I was once called back from my vacation to help out because another employee in another department was off that week. When I mentioned that I had already committed to teaching Bible school, my boss confided in me that he was being demoted to my job and the plan was to retire the employee I would be replacing that week and give me her job. After doing her job all week, she returned as though noting had happen and I was told she wouldn’t be retiring and I was out. The last thing I did, was to give my already paid for parking space to a co-worker.
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Well this is a cheery little thread!
Being in newspapers, I’m very concerned about future layoffs, especially now with the economy all topsy-turvy. We’ve already been through several rounds of deep cuts as it is, any one of us knows we could be next. There’s such a domino effect also: Mervyn’s goes out of business, we lose another big ad.
Ten years ago the small newspaper I worked for completely folded and ceased publication (after some 100 years in the community). Everyone was let go except for the editor, me and 1 other reporter. We were all transferred to our larger sister paper across town, where I still work.
But I’ll never forget that day, with all my co-workers packing up their desks (I’d also started hauling things out to my car that morning, assuming the rumors that had been going around all week were true and all of us would be let go).
The other “spared” reporter and I finally went out for a long lunch as it was way too uncomfortable after learning we were being kept on as our co-workers all were being laid off. While we were relieved to still have our jobs, there was certainly no joy in any of it. I think someone called it “survivor guilt.”
Interestingly, everyone who was let go that day landed on their feet, most getting better jobs, but I’m sure it was no fun going through the unemployment. And so many good and talented people are lost through these things, often those with the most experience (and higher-end salaries compared to newer hires).
I’ve only been laid off once in my life, 26 years ago, right before Christmas, and I was out of work for only about a month. But it would be much tougher now, I’m afraid, both due to my age & the fact that “my” industry — the thing I’ve done all my life — is basically imploding.
MIM: So what’s a Christmas bonus?
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These are some amazing stories of good folks who were let go. I hope more folks post to this thread
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Thought I’d throw in my $.02 as one more ex-pastor
I didn’t study biology at university (accounting, actually) but left the corporate world after several years to pastor a congregation of the small denomination I belonged to. Served there for four years, and was transferred to another for two more, before some heartbreaking stuff best not discussed here took place, and my denominational apparatus decided, together with my second congregation, that they’d had enough of me.
Could see it coming for a few weeks before, but the official bad news came along … wait for it … on my 40th birthday. Happy birthday, RR, and welcome to your mid-life crisis!
Being neither professionally qualified nor spiritually ready to do ministry elsewhere after all the bruising (I didn’t go to seminary, but was essentially an employed lay preacher for six years), and uncertain how to re-enter the corporate world, I was looking at substitute teaching and bus driving, and such. And worrying about losing our house and moving in with my MIL. Resumes to companies doing the sort of work I’d once done got nowhere.
Then I got a call from a fellow pastor (ministry part-timer) who worked for a local government near me that had an opening in its treasury management function. First glance: I don’t know how to do a job like that! Second glance: what could it hurt? Interview practice, right? Well, they offered me the job; they’d had trouble filling it. Both parties to this deal were desperate, so it was a good match!
I’ve been here for four years, have done good work, and have enjoyed myself. I also took the opportunity of having been run out of town on a rail to bring my family to a much healthier church. We’ve thrived there, and have found plenty of opportunity for gospel ministry.
Couldn’t have said it then, but getting fired was the best thing for me.
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RR: Great last line. As believers, we always know that God is doing something for our good in these things, despite the pain and discomfort and hardship.
Reminds me a wonderful post my friends the Angells posted recently on their web site about being thankful in ALL things:
http://www.bentleyfarm.org/2008/11/greatest-saint.html
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Real estate is slow all over, so my firm decided to use some of us paralegals in the Probate department where help was needed. So far it has worked out well and most likely saved our jobs from being cut. And as a further blessing, a few of us are becoming trained in a new field which can only strengthen our employability down the road.
I know it is only by Gods grace I am afforded the work opportunities He gives to me. I am very thankful to Him and to my firm!
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