So, How Does it Feel?

The emails jammed my already crowded inbox with regularity, all with the same theme: So and So had been laid off at my two former workplaces, who, in a marriage of clueless and heartless corporate gangs, merged a few years ago. A news article confirmed it was so.

One of the former colleagues kicked to the curb was an arrogant senior editor who shifted his work onto me every chance he got. He only wanted to do one thing, and one thing only.

So when there was an assignment he didn’t want to do, he pushed it on me. I didn’t say anything because he had seniority over me and it was obvious his male superiors were going to protect him. Hey, I don’t want to see any one get laid off, but in his case, his laziness and indifference finally caught up with him.

Other emails hinted the raging drunk who harassed me for 16 years was also on his way out, along with his happy hour buddy, a frequently inebriated, nasty, cheating lout with disgusting personal habits. But before that jerk got the boot, he weaseled himself to another job, where he will surely be shocked to learn he cannot get away with the same bad behavior tolerated for so long at his former job. A rude awakening awaits. His farewell party splashed across Facebook, and if it’s on Facebook, it must be true, right?

Hazier was the fate of my former horrible boss. When I inquired of my sources where they heard this information, they said it was PR people. In other words, unreliable office gossip. I had heard rumors of this guy’s (and the company’s) demise before and nothing came of it. I had no reason to believe this time would be any different.

He had somehow survived, despite his drunkenness, poor management, and abusive behavior. He actually once told the HR lady that screaming at underlings made them perform better! How this man worked at the same place for 30 plus years without a harassment lawsuit filed against him boggles the mind.

He was an office bully who, in true alcoholic fashion, blamed everyone else for his shortcomings and failures. He raged whenever he felt like it, just to assert his power. Every mistake, no matter how slight, pitched him into a fit. His long survival stands as an exemplar of white male privilege. No matter how badly he acted or the company performed, the All White Males Club protected his pimply pale ass. He knew how to play the corporate game. Or as a former colleague said, he kissed up and punched down.

One of my former co-worker made an interesting comment. She said she had heard a woman executive at the parent company was giving this guy and his bar buddy a hard time. Considering how misogynist these jerks are, I’m sure they hated being belittled by a —Horrors! How dare she! — woman. Again, with nothing more to go on than gossip, I didn’t believe someone who survived more plagues than a cockroach was truly gone.

Then, THE email finally came. My former colleague noted that the website masthead no longer listed his name. (Again, I checked. It didn’t.) So he really was gone…or was he? A little while later, I logged onto website, and there is was — definitive proof. A goodbye column written in his name. I say written in his name because when I was there, whenever he had to moderate a panel or do a presentation, he always made one of the editors, like me, write it for him. So I’m positive another editor wrote that vomit-inducing column. No one, except maybe the pill-popping alcoholic whore he installed over me as the editor in chief, is sorry to see him go, I’m sure. Finally, corporate cutbacks reached upper management. Boo hoo.

For many years, I shied away from anything near my former workplace, fearful I’d bump into his toxic orbit. I knew if I did, he’d come after me. That’s not paranoia, it’s how that guy operates. He’s all about revenge. (I’m sure he hated me for outing the plagiarism of a former editor.) Now, he is gone, and I’m thankful, although I still want nothing to do with my former workplace. And it certainly doesn’t change my increasingly dire financial situation.

But if I ever did see him again, I’d like to ask him a few questions, like….

How did it feel to have your fate decided in a boardroom without you being there? How did it feel to not have any chance to save yourself or learn the real reason behind your layoff?

How does it feel to not have someplace to go everyday where you can spew your self-hate at other defenseless people? How does it feel to not have any power at all?

How did it feel to clean out your desk, go home, and face the fact you have no steady paycheck coming in after just 26 weeks of unemployment? How did it feel to wonder and worry how you’re going to pay the mortgage and health insurance without that steady paycheck?

How does it feel to apply for job after job and get rejection after rejection?

How did it feel when you realized you could no longer terminate other people to save your job?

How did it feel to have worked for three decades at the same company and then be told you were worthless to them?

For so long, you were so smug, confident in your belief you would never get laid off. Now, you’re just another out-of-work loser, just like all the other people whose jobs you terminated while you continued to pull down a hefty paycheck for doing nothing. You know now you were nothing special.

So I have to ask you, how does it feel?

Double Standard

A few weeks ago ESPN dumped some of its grossly overpaid on-air “personalities” in a mass layoff. This set off the expected boo-hoo-ing in the media. How could ESPN put all those nice people out of work? ESPN bosses are such meanies! This is awful! Such bad times in the media industry and those people had to suffer! Upper management is stupid and to blame, and those people didn’t deserve to lose their jobs!

Really? Tell me about it. I’ve been laid off twice and have never gotten such expressions of sympathy. My twitter feed (which has many sport writers on it because of my baseball obsession) burst with heartfelt condolences to those now-former ESPN’ers. Me? Most I got was “sorry to hear that” from friends and family. After my second layoff, my sister — my sister! — sent me a text that said, “Bet you were surprised.” Not exactly comforting, eh? My former co-workers? Most have cut all contact with me after I was booted. Hey, guys, my job was sacrificed to save yours! Doesn’t that warrant a thank you, guys. Guys? Hello? Anybody remember me?

The ESPN layoffs got me thinking. (Freelance work is slow now, so I have time to think. Maybe not a good thing that is.) Everybody can agree that layoffs are bad and hurtful. Losing a job is never a pleasant experience for anybody, no matter their profession. Yet we seem to have a double standard when it comes to parceling out sympathy to those who have been laid off. People who are public figures, or semi-public figures, like the ESPN’ers, amass an outpouring of compassion, even though their cushy salaries and marketable names make it almost a lock they will ride their brief period of unemployment without any injury to their bank accounts. Most will end up writing for one of those sports websites that sprout like dandelions in spring (and will be lucky to last two years). So should we really feel sorry for them?

So, yeah, public figures tend to engender sympathy when they lose their jobs — as opposed to the faceless, nameless editors and journalists cast out by their callous overloads at newspapers and media companies

Politicians, too, single out certain professions for our sympathy when workers toiling in those fields lose their jobs en masse. Like coal miners and steelworkers. But I wonder if those same politicians will direct their attention to all the retail workers headed to the unemployment line when hoary retailers like Sears and JCPenney shutter stores?

Why a double standard? Aren’t we all victims of the same societal upheavals: shifting consumer tastes and consumption habits, technology rendering some workers obsolete, and a rapidly evolving job market that requires new skills many workers simply don’t have. Weren’t we all sacrificed for management’s brain-dead decisions? Like ESPN paying billions of dollars — yes, billions! — for the rights to NFL and NBA games.

And aren’t we all victims of cruel upper management; indifferent boards of directors; and ruthless investment bankers — all locked on profits and merciless cost cutting. Workers be damned! We want more $$$ to our bottom line (and obscene executive pay).

The ESPN fiasco highlights another trend I’ve been seeing lately in layoffs. My former workplace(s) recently laid off a number of my former co-workers (more on that in another post). This time, however, instead of ditching some low or mid-level salesperson or editor, the powers that be targeted several higher up editors and executives (including the horrible drunken boss who bullied me for 16 years). Layoffs have definitely moved up the corporate totem pole. Makes sense — there are only so many secretaries and assistant editors you can lay off before upper management takes aim at higher salaried but useless employees.

Pretty soon those same upper management drones will be without a job. Will anybody feel sorry for them?

Let There Be Work

The computer screen glows with a soft blue backdrop. The table with the notepad sits at my left, as does my landline phone (yes, such contraptions still exist). I’m ready to work…except there is no work.

Is there any sadder, more pathetic tableau than an eager worker ready to work with no

work?

The foretold email came Monday morning. Changes were afoot, we were forewarned from the masters at the part-time, at-home copyediting job I’ve toiled at for a year. The harshness of those changes become painfully apparent after reading the email. My hours were cut, and not just by a little, but a lot.

My hours have fluctuated from between 18 to 24, an acceptable rate for a part-time job. This time, however, the cut in hours dropped to a shocking fewer than nine. Egads! Not only that, the editing queues I was switched to were clearly the dregs with very little copy to edit, ensuring I wouldn’t even reach that puny limit.

Thinking it may have been a misprint (yeah, right), I inquired whether those hours were correct. I sent another email to another supervisor, again asking why my hours were slashed so dramatically.

The responses I received were both hurtful and confusing. The one supervisor said the head honcho was concerned over my “mistakes” (more on that in a bit) and wanted me to improve my editing before I would be given any more hours.

Yet that very same head honcho later replied that those hours were the best they could do and that more editing opportunities may open up in the future. No mention of “mistakes.”

What is going on here?

Let’s first address the “mistakes.” (Apologies at the onset for what is surely self-serving and passive-aggressive excuses on my part.) Did I make mistakes? Yes, as does every copy editor. It’s the nature of the job — you only get noticed when you make a mistake, never for the numerous times you caught a misspelling or corrected a wrong fact or rewrote a horrible piece to make it readable.

Some of the mistakes were legitimate and on me. I misspelled a proper noun. Others classify as more subjective, and based on the preference of the head honcho. In some instances, style points were not clearly defined, at least in my mind. I could argue those points, but to what end?

To what end, too, can I ever hope to get back in the good graces of the head honcho? I know from painful past experience, once you get a reputation as a “bad” worker, it’s very difficult to change that perception (especially when your workload has been slashed to near nothing. How am I to prove any improvement?). Indeed, it’s nearly impossible. When I asked the head honcho twice to clarify what he meant when he told the supervisor about my mistakes, I never received a reply, which I think is disrespectful.

Yet I’m also getting a feeling there is more going on here than my mistakes. The head honcho’s first reply indicated there were cutbacks in assignments from the clients. And the supervisor also mentioned in a later email that the head honcho was under pressure from his bosses.

Yet as someone who has been laid off twice due to corporate budget cuts, I’ve become accustomed to being jerked around by bosses. None of this surprises me. In fact, the signs started about six months ago when they outsourced some of the writing responsibilities to the Philippines. (I kid you not.) Then they pulled out the go-to corporate cheap trick of hiring an intern (aka free labor).

This is merely the logical progression of vicious, zero-sum corporate cost-cutting. What’s next? Robots to write and edit the stories? What happens when those AI marvels make mistakes? Slash their hours? Replace them with a newer technological model?

I also wonder if the other copy editors’ hours have been slashed similarly. I thought about asking them, but thought better of it. It would be intrusive and they are under no obligation to tell me. Since I was the last one hired, I stood to lose the most hours versus the more senior copy editors. They have seniority.

I wonder as well, why go through this pretense of stringing me along? Do they want me to quit? If there is no money to pay me, then lay me off. Or, tell me there is no work right now, but there may be in two months and I can start up again at that time.

Hey, I’m a part-time 1099 worker for this company. Meaning, I receive no benefits nor do I possess any employment rights. When an employer wants to rid itself of a full-time employee, they typically make his or her life miserable in the hopes they will quit, thereby freeing them of any unemployment payments or severance pay. I know how this game is played. I’ve been there myself and seen it happen to co-workers.

But in this instance, that is not the case. They can let me go without any explanation or payment. Just a fare-thee-well email. So why jerk me around like this? It’s unnecessary and frankly, cruel.

Now, I’m thrust back into that same bad place I fell into after my two layoffs. One night, as I nestled my head on my pillow, tears stung my eyes: I’m stupid, I’m incompetent. I’ll never work again.

What do I tell my family and friends? That I was let go because of my mistakes? Then, they’ll think I’m stupid and incompetent. I know my sister. If I told her, and I haven’t yet, she’ll profess sympathy to my face, then cut me to piece in front of her friends. “Oh, my sister, what a stupid idiot.” Better to say my hours were cut and leave it at that.

I’m also irritated and ashamed of myself. I worked hard for this godawful company. I took on extra work when asked, toiled over the weekends, declined other jobs when offered, all because I felt loyalty to these bottom-line loving jerks. Ha! I was the jerk, thinking my hard work and loyalty would ever be reciprocated. When will I ever learn? Maybe now I have.

This whole distressing incident underscores how precarious my financial situation is as well. Between this part-time copy editing job and my content marketing writing duties, I was pulling down about half of what I made in my previous full-time job. Not flush by any means, but I was able to pay my bills without dipping (too much) into my savings. Now? Well, it’s going to be a lot tougher, and I’m not sure I can survive much longer.

Right now, I don’t know what my next move is. Right now, the fall chill has descended and my beloved Mets’ mangled season came to a jolting yet fitting end. I need time to think and let my simmering depression lift. Perhaps my hope of cobbling together two or three part-time jobs is no longer financially viable. Do I try for a full-time job — even though my chances of getting one are pretty much zilch at this point?

For now, I’ll wait a bit to see if the head honcho comes through on his hint of more editing opportunities and therefore, more hours.

Until then, I sit ready to work.