Well, the New Year has
kicked off in rather bizarre fashion. Wonder what fresh hell awaits me in
2015?
Two afternoons ago, I
decided to take a break from my low-paying freelance job/job
When I returned, I saw a
very interesting email in my inbox: My former former company just acquired my
former company. Yep, that’s right, my two previous employers — both of whom
laid me off — have merged.
Bizarre, right? It gets even
more bizarre, stay with me.
I’m not surprised. My former
company, from all reports, was foundering and even laid off more staffers
(including the misogynist fraud who ensured I was kicked to the curb — karma is
a bitch, baby!) late last year. So the fact that it was sold didn’t come as a
complete shock.
That it was grabbed by my
former former company was a bizarre coincidence, but again, not a shock. It,
too, was recently acquired by a mega-bucks private equity outfit that is
pumping it with cash to fund its expansion. Apparently, it settled on my former
company, which was bought IMHO for a rather paltry sum.
You want even more bizarre?
That mega-bucks private equity firm previously owned my former former company. (It
reacquired it on the cheap, of course.) After it sold my former former company,
the you-know-what hit the fan and I along with many others were laid off in a
desperate, frantic bid by the dumbass boozehound boss to save his job and those
of his lapdogs when the newly installed head of the company wanted to ditch the
entire division.
The CEO of my former company
is set to leave at the end of this month, no doubt cushioned by a hefty golden
parachute. Drop the mike. And why not? His job is done. He was hired to dismantle and prep a
sinking company for its eventual sale, and he accomplished his task with
startling, heartless efficiency: Staffers were laid off, whole departments were
eliminated and outsourced, offices were shuttered. Not sure what he will do
now. Either he will retire early, or find another company to ruthlessly raze.
What’s ahead for my former
company follows a familiar path: “Redundant” positions will be combined, with
staffers from the acquiring company retained; those from the acquired company
given the steel-toed boot. Must cut costs, must save money. Real people are meaningless line items.
However, since I worked at
my former former company when it was taken over by that very same private
equity firm, I can say with assurance that the majority of people at my former
company have nothing to fear. The private equity firm was pretty hands off,
from what I experienced, and the company even expanded under its supervision.
It’s also pretty good news
for my former former company. With a shiny new acquisition to keep him
occupied, the CEO at my former former company, who came after my termination, turns a blind eye to the dysfunctional goings-on in the
division where I worked. It won’t be any import to him that the division is
probably making very little, if any, revenues. He has a brand-new car to varoom
around in like the big-shot captain of industry he thinks he is.
He won’t see, or care to
see, the head of the department and its chief of advertising slip out for lunch
on a Friday afternoon, go to a bar, make love all afternoon to their tonics and
gin, and never return to the office. He won’t see, or care to see, the nominal
head of the editorial department—a pill-popping drunken whore—slurp painkillers
with glasses of wine or hand out her illegally gotten stash of prescription drugs
to co-workers in the middle of the afternoon in the office, in plain sight of
everyone…except him.
I’m not sure how I feel
about this bizarre turn of the screw. It obviously has no impact on my life or
situation. Those companies are still in business, while I remain jobless.
That’s as it ever was.
Seeing both companies go
kaput was not something I ever wanted; too many former colleagues I worked with
and respected would have been trashed through no fault of their own. (Though a
reckoning for the aforementioned drunks is long, long overdue.)
Yet when I heard this news
and pondered its significance (probably more than I should have), I couldn’t
help but think back to something a former colleague said after my former former
company laid me off. She said, in
essence, I was laid off to save the company.
I guess she was right. Those
repeated rounds of layoffs did enable
both companies to ultimately survive. And I and all my laid-off brethren were mere pawns in a grisly corporate
So while those who remain
can pop the champagne cork, smug in the knowledge that their merciless bloodletting strategy
ultimately prevailed, many of us thrust aside strain to put our lives back
together again, piece by painstaking piece.
In my case, the damage has
been done and is absolute: They smashed my career and livelihood, obliterated my financial
security, and shoved me on an eventual path to homelessness. No, that is not an
overstatement.
The ultimate salvation of
both companies came too late for many others and I. Oh, I admit I was a bit angry and bitter when I first read the news. But now, I'm wistful. Why, oh, why, couldn’t I have
been kept on that much longer, to bask in the relief of a long-fought
redemption with co-workers I stood with for years?
That wasn’t meant to be. Even
sadder is that it’s doubtful any of the managers at those companies even
remember the names of any of us flung away in the name of “just a business
decision.” Those of us sacrificed
so the company could survive? Don’t we deserve any acknowledgement? No, we’re
the forgotten saviors, relegated to the garbage can for our sacrificial deed.
Now, both companies are free
to continue to inflict their cruelty in the name of the Greater Corporate Good.
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