Fugazy

Fugazy (fa-gay-zee)…an Italian-American urban slang term meaning something that is cheesy, not quite right, a lie, phony, not authentic.

When politicians or corporations are fugazy, it’s called spin. When anybody else acts fugazy, it’s called lying.

I’ve been thinking about this word a lot lately because there have certainly been some fugazy happenings at work in recent weeks.

First, they announce they are closing down three business lines, yet keeping the people who worked for those units on staff, but in different, unspecified roles. The stated reason from upper management is they “don’t want to let good people go.”

Like that has ever stopped them before. At my former workplace, when they shut down your department, they wanted you outta there at warp speed. So I guess it was somewhat comforting to hear management express some measure of compassion for employees, instead of simply giving them the steel-toed boot.

It was also heartening to hear a company admit that if a worker is doing a good job, the job they were hired for, but revenues are down through no fault of the employee, then there really is no justifiable reason to let a good person go. And certainly with the amount of work they are asking us to do, we need all hands on deck. (Alas, companies don’t think like that; it’s all about doing more with less and squeezing as much as possible out of a leaner and leaner workforce.)

Is this really compassion? Digging a little deeper, this has more to do with the company saving face than compassion. I mean, if a company is seen as cutting workers and units en masse, then it must mean revenues are down and the company looks bad to the entire business world. So if it doesn’t cut the employees, then the company doesn’t look so bad, right?

Except that our new CEO has cut entire departments and people have been laid off. So it sounds disingenuous, to say the least, to now say you are not going to cut positions. And wouldn’t the people previously let go want to know why they were cut and these other employees were kept on even though their department was disbanded? Just asking…

If a company is shutting down whole departments to save costs, then wouldn’t it make sense to eliminate perhaps the biggest expense: the employees at those units? Doesn’t keeping them on negate the intended purpose of cutting expenses? Obviously, upper management thinks we are just a bunch of morons. (Why do I keep hearing that old Who song in the background: “We won’t be fooled again”?) Something fugazy is going on here.

A couple of examples of fugazy treatment of staffers who were either demoted or had their positions axed but were kept on are very instructive of how upper management works…in a fugazy manner:

One fairly high-lever manager was obviously demoted and his job taken over by another manager. But instead of letting him go, they kept him on and gave him that kiss of death of a title: special projects something or other. Yeah, special projects…cleaning out your gutters at home. (Now, I never liked this guy. He was smug and acted like he was too good to even speak to me. So I can’t say I was sorry to see him get the shaft.)

Please…No one is fooled by that bogus special projects title. It’s a “don’t let the door hit you on the way out” title if there ever was one. Fortunately, this guy got the message (getting publicly humiliated in front of co-workers has a way of hitting you upside the head) and found another job. His “special project” position is going unfilled.

Then there was the guy they shuffled around to four different positions before they finally let him go. Before they did, however, they made his life miserable by nitpicking and criticizing the work he did. Apparently, he didn’t get the message soon enough.

He didn’t make the situation any better by constantly grousing and whining. The fact that he was less than enthusiastic about having to learn new jobs every two months was understandable. I’m not sure he could have done anything that would have made the outcome any different. It was obvious they wanted him gone and he was slow on the uptake. But there is a happy ending: he eventually got another job…at a competitor. (Moral of the story to upper management: be careful those workers you discard so cavalierly.)

Far be it from me to question my executive betters, but these decisions seem a bit, well, fugazy.

Taken together those two stories lead me to believe that what is going on here is an indirect (or possibly direct) message to those workers who are kept on but whose departments have been eliminated that goes something like this:

“OK, we’re keeping on the payroll but for only about 6 months. We’re giving you time to find another job so we don’t have to pay unemployment for you. But if you take longer than 6 months, you will make your working life a living hell until you leave or we make you leave. Got it?”

Compassion? More like fugazy. This is all about the company not wanting to look bad, and treating good workers badly and getting away with it under a cloak of phony compassion.

It stretches credulity like Spanx on a Kardarshian to believe that there won't be a winnowing of the headcount sometime soon. We see through this fugazy act like a sheer top on a Hollywood starlet.

Now, to be fair, in some circumstances, they have found proper positions for those staffers whose departments were disbanded. A position may open up they could fill, or if there is a genuine, newly created job (not some fugazy special projects title) a person is qualified for, then it always makes sense to fill from within the company. But those instances are far and few between. Most of the time, you’re likely a goner.

NEWS FLASH! A member of the department resigned today. Now, before you think he took one for the team, he got a great position at a prestigious company. So, it will be interesting to see if they fill his position or let it remain unfilled. If it goes unfilled, then we will know they ultimately had staff cuts on the agenda...yeah, fugazy.  

Then this past week, something happened that shook me and others to the core. I won’t go into the details, suffice to say that when my former company undertook the same strategy, a round of layoffs (including me) soon followed.

Remember, too, we are deep into autumn, the time of the year when companies formulate budgets for the New Year. Those plans could include layoffs. (Oh, how I used to love the fall.) As a co-worker succinctly put it, we workers are here to make the company profits, when we fail to do that and are no longer of use to them, we are cut off like a head in a guillotine

To a company, all these maneuvers are justified as a way to make profits, whatever the cost may be to workers and their families.

And change can be hard. But there is change, and there is a “Game of Thrones” episode; what is happening now is veering uncomfortably close to the latter.

I understand that companies must change direction and if an employee no longer fits into that new vision, then might it be more compassion to let them go instead of jerking them around unmercifully? (Yeah, I can’t believe I’m saying that.)

Frankly, all these changes are disruptive to working morale. How are we as workers supposed to do a good job when we know we could be out of work at any time?

These changes signal to all in and outside of the company that management doesn’t know what it is doing; that is grasping at anything in a futile attempt to make money.

Like I said. Fugazy.