Buddy, Can You Spare a Water Bottle?

Something happened at work recently that was a stark and rather sad reminder of how dismissive employers are of their workers.

There was a stack of water bottles in the kitchen. Thinking said water bottles were meant for the staff, I put two in the refrigerator to cool. But when I went back later, there was a sign on the rack of bottles:

Please do no take. These bottles are only meant for meetings and visitors.

Oh, now I get it. When the big kahunas have meetings or a visitor comes to the office, they get the water bottles, but the rest of us mere cubicle dwellers cannot.

So I apologized to the office manager and put the water bottles back. But I was steamed.

Aren’t we part of the staff? Are visitors more important to the company than we are, the people who are actually putting together the products and services that are generating the firm’s revenues? It just says to us that management does not think we are very important.

Yes, we have a water cooler in the office. Why can’t they just get a cup of water from that? It’s good enough for us, but not for upper management and visitors?

Despite the tone of this blog, I actually do understand why companies have to make personnel cuts in choppy economic times. I understand why they cannot give out raises or year-end bonuses in certain years.

I don’t expect much in the way of extras. I can do without summer company picnics and pizza Fridays.

I also believe that the biggest (non)perk of all should be outlawed: the company holiday party with an open bar. I have been to too many of those where I’ve been ignored by the cool kids and watched co-workers get drunk and nasty. Ug. Then there was my all-time low point for a company holiday party: The time a crazybitch colleague screamed at me because she thought I somehow messed with a CD she wanted to dance to. Yes, she was drunk. For the record, I was simply retrieving a CD I brought to the event and had no idea she was waiting to dance. But what really got me was that she was going to dance with a bunch of other women. George Clooney wasn’t out there waiting for her.

I’d rather go for a root canal.

But water bottles? Come on. We workers put up with a lot…no raises, crappy health plans and double workloads, all for the sake of a steady paycheck. But this is so, well, cheap.

Are things that bad, or does the company think so little of us, that they cannot give us bottles of better water? 

Loyalty is a One-Way Street

We are in the dog days of summer and my beloved Mets are doing their annual second-half flop to last place. So naturally my thoughts turn to football, and that brings me to…Peyton Manning.

Yes, the same Peyton Manning who was unceremoniously dumped by his former team, the Indianapolis Colts last year. Even after he brought the team a Super Bowl title and did nothing but play like a superstar for the Colts, management decided to go with a younger quarterback.

Not that I can’t blame the Colts. Manning is, after all, well into his 30s and coming off neck surgery. In sports, younger is better. And there was the not insignificant matter of a $28-million bonus the team would have owed him had they kept him on the roster. (Odd isn't it, that the same management that agreed to that ridiculous clause used it as a reason for not keeping him.)

Yet I can’t feel too sorry for Manning, either. He signed on with the Denver Broncos for about $90 million. Not exactly chump change.

Nevertheless, the whole incident shows just how little loyalty employers have toward their employees, even the great ones. Loyalty between employers and employees is a one-way street nowadays. Employers expect workers to be loyal to the company yet they give us no loyalty in return.

Companies know employees can’t move easily to others jobs; therefore, they know we must put up with little or no raises, bad working conditions and high-deductible health plans. Really, some deductibles are so high that the only way anyone could meet those numbers is to get hit by a truck.

If we complain? Too bad, say bosses. If you don’t like it find something else. But they know we can’t. The general attitude is we are lucky to have a job.

And what are companies giving workers in return?

Cue the sound of crickets chirping…

Not much. Companies have made it very clear they will cut workers en masse when it suits them, even if we are doing a good job. Their loyalty is to the bottom line, not us.

So we sit in our cubicles and seethe, waiting and hoping for the economy to turn and create more jobs.

Because when the economy does turn, and eventually it will, it always does, how much loyalty do we think we are going to show our employers?

Good Review. So What?

After 16 months out of work and 16 months into my new job, I finally got a performance review. You know, those employee-crushing exercises in management power plays in which you are told nothing you did is good enough and impossibly high goals are set for next year. What a joy!

Fortunately, I’m happy to report, my most recent review was quite good, glowing even. Hey, after my brutal layoff and some nasty, nitpicking performance evaluations in the past, I’ll take it. The opposite is too unpleasant to think about.

I even got a raise…2.5%. Not much, but anything helps at this point. I can’t keep dipping into my savings every month.

Nevertheless, as my best friend would say, “So the fuck what.”

I’m no longer naïve enough to believe doing a good job will save my position when cutbacks come. Right now, I know at my company, the All White Males Club is evaluating the entire organization. Who knows what positions they will decide to hack? Will they keep the good workers or save their cronies?

I will say this again, in today’s workplace doing a good job is no guarantee you will keep your job. Unfair? Yes, but that’s the way it is.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to do good work. In my new job, I’ve worked my formerly unemployed butt off, been helpful to co-workers, kept my mouth shut and haven’t make any major mistakes. I came close to getting reamed out once, but it didn’t happen because I happened to be working on what the manager wanted. Whew!

Yet, if they decide to eliminate my position, it won’t matter one iota.

Which brings me to the subject of an upcoming post: Loyalty—A One Way Street.

Bitterness is My Brand

As any reader (hello, are you out there?) of this blog has probably surmised by now, I’m pretty bitter about my layoff. OK, a lot bitter.

Please, bear with me and hear me out about why I still have lingering bitterness over my layoff.

In our society, we are not supposed to be bitter or angry. We’re supposed to forgive those who have wronged us. Get over it and move on is the advice most people would give you after something bad, like a layoff, has happened to you. If you are angry or bitter, it will only hurt your long-term happiness, so said one guy I used to work with (who wasn’t laid off). Easy for him to say; he still had a job. What about my long-term happiness without an income stream?

Yet I wonder if that is the best or most realistic advice. It’s easy to say the words “I forgive you,” but unless you truly feel them in your heart, you cannot heal and you’re just fooling yourself.

That old saying, “Time heals all wounds” is certainly true. Why should we be so quick to forgive anyway? It’s almost like a double-hurt: You want to forgive and get over it, because that’s what everybody says you should do, but you can’t. The pain is still there. Then you feel bad because you can’t forgive.

You feel like a bad person because you cannot forgive, at least not yet. No, you are not a bad person. You are merely dealing with a painful situation in your own way, in your own time.

For some people, it may take only days or weeks to forgive. For others, forgiveness may take a much longer time, possibly years. It’s really up to the individual and how they process the hurt and pain of being thrown out of a job and being unemployed for a long stretch of time.

And do we have to forgive everything? Yes, I forgive the young driver who skidded on a wet road surface and dented my car. It was not done intentionally and it really wasn’t his fault.

Forgiving my douchebag former bosses for putting me out of work in favor of people with less experience and higher paychecks is taking a lot longer. Perhaps if I knew the true reasons behind my layoff I could understand why they did what they did and forgive them. But I doubt I’ll ever get a truthful answer, so I’m left to wonder why and that’s hurtful.

Maybe if the actual termination had been handled a bit more humanely I would not feel so, well, bitter. No I was essentially told I was there too long, making too much money, so clean out my desk and leave. No thank you for 16-plus years of hard work.

Yes, I’ve thought long and hard about what I did that may have led to my layoff. Were my poor tech skills to blame? Maybe. Did all those petty tiffs I had with co-workers finally come back to haunt me? Possibly.

Although I’ll never know why, I have taken my new job as a second chance and tried to upgrade my tech skills, making better progress than I would have ever thought (although I will never be a tech person). I’ve worked hard to get along with co-workers (even when they really should be bitch-slapped) and have been quite successful. Whenever I’ve felt myself falling back on bad habits, I’ve quickly changed my behavior.

And I can honestly say that the bitterness over my layoff is peeling away from me, thin layer after thin layer. I’ve forgiven most of the bosses and co-workers who threw me under the bus. I understand why they did what they did and I forgive them and wish them well. I don’t want anything to do with them anymore, but I do forgive them.

The only one I cannot forgive is the head of the company, a truly despicable human being who uses his position to abuse other people to compensate for his own unhappiness and shortcomings. Instead of trying to make the company more profitable, he preferred to go out drinking with his buddies and lay off other people to save himself. Someday, he will be held accountable for his actions.

For many months, I wished the company would go under. But not anymore. That doesn’t appear to be happening anytime soon, so why hope for it. Besides, I don’t want to see the many good, hardworking people I used to work with out of a job. Yes, they choose to stay, but I don’t want to see them unemployed because the head of the company has no clue how to make the business profitable.

As far as me being bitter, well, most of my bitterness has been expressed to former co-workers who were also laid off. Those were private conversations between colleagues and it went no further. During job interviews, I certainly never expressed any bitterness toward my former company. I simply said I was let go for economic reasons.

The only time I let my bitterness and anger get the better of me was when I told my former boss one of the editors used a story I wrote a year-and-a-half earlier. But that was clearly plagiarism. I also felt they kicked sand in my face by letting her do that. I mean, if my work wasn’t good enough to justify continued employment, then why was a story I wrote being used again?

What happened to her? I regretfully report that she was let go. I don’t feel good about getting someone fired, but even she later admitted she was the cause of her termination. (Yes, I told her what I had done and apologized. I honestly felt they would simply give her a slap on the wrist.) I still feel awful about it, although she quickly got another job (helped by the head of my former company who wouldn’t lift a hand to help me) and seems happy.

Still, I learned a valuable lesson. When we take action out of bitterness and anger, other people can get hurt.

All the more reason I need to forgive my former bosses…and maybe, just maybe, myself.

Burning Bridges

I have a very bad habit. I know I should stop, but I can’t.

What is this bad habit? Do I drink too much? No, just a glass of wine on the weekends.  Spend too much on clothes? You betcha. Eat too much chocolate? Guilty pleasure.

No, the habit I refer to is my strange fascination with articles on how to deal with a layoff. You know the kind: All sorts of original advice like you should network to get another job after being laid off. (Really? You mean I can’t rob a bank.)

I know it’s silly. All it does it bring me back to that awful day and the 16 months I spent lonely, stressed and unemployed.

Maybe I do it because I’m looking for some comfort or explanation of why I so rudely treated by former employer.

No, instead I get nuggets like this: “You should know it’s just as embarrassing and gut-wrenching for the company: They don’t have the money to pay you.”

Oh, right: Corporations are people, too. I’ll go out on limb and bet the writer, Rebecca Thorman of U.S. News & World Report’s Money page, is going to vote for Mitt Romney.

My first thought was, has this chick ever been laid off? Does she know how it really feels? Probably not.

And that wasn’t the only advice this moron gave that got my blood boiling. She said that we shouldn’t burn our bridges with our former employer. Hey, I think my former bosses burned their bridges with me when they laid me off.

Yes, I understand we should be calm when our world is collapsing around us. I’m not advocating any kind of verbal or physical violence. Not at all.

I admit, I did snap a bit when I was brutally told I was being laid off. But I never raised my voice or swore at anyone. I told my boss I didn’t want to talk to him, and I also snapped at a former co-worker who I later found out threw me under the bus to save one of her office buddies. Even then, I said, “Don’t talk to me. You have a job.” Not that bad, really.

My biggest issue is with the advice that we should take our layoffs lightly and go quietly into a long stretch of unemployment, a severe drop in income, possible foreclosure and bankruptcy without so much as a peep of protest. Not bloody likely. I say, make your displeasure known to your douche-bag former bosses. It’s probably the last chance you’ll ever get. They've already laid you off, so they can't do anything else to you.

What about how the layoffs were handled? Why was I laid off when people who had less time in the company and made more than me kept on? I’ll tell you why: Because managers are allowed to cherry-pick who stays and goes and that’s extremely unfair.

But how can I expect someone who has never been laid off but yet gets to tell us how we’re supposed to feel to understand?

Corporate Feudalism

Since the GOP seems ready to nominate the ultimate corporate overlord, Mitt “I like to fire people” Romney, as its presidential candidate, it’s time to discuss Corporate Feudalism.

What is Corporate Feudalism? It’s the concept (invented by me, of course. I have a lot of time on my hands) that companies in the U.S. are built not innovation or inventing goods and services that can help society in some way, but on the perpetuation of their own dominance and oversized paychecks. It’s all about keeping themselves and their handpicked cronies in power so they can rake in mega salaries and big fat bonus checks every year. Just like Feudal Lords of yesteryear.

Even after taxpayers, their serfs, had to bail them out from their own stupidity, Wall Street hucksters shamelessly pocketed six-figure bonuses. This after many had thrown workers out on the street to keep their own jobs so they could continue their own lavish lifestyles. Not one has been held to account for their criminal actions. That’s despicable.

Oh, Republicans say this class warfare, that we’re jealous of their wealth. Not so.

All of us know rich people. We work with them, are friends with them and they are members of our families. Good for them if they have beaucoup bucks. I always say, if you are going to be jealous of what another person makes, you will be a very unhappy person.

No, we irritates us is the power their money gives them. The power to change laws in their favor, the power to hire us and then dump us when we become “surplus.” (If we were surplus, why did you hire us in the first place?)

Name one U.S. company that consistently comes up with innovative products? Apple is the only one I can think of. (Although I wish they innovate a little slower. I just bought an iPhone 4 and now the company wants to come out with an iPhone5.) Of course, Apple has managed to steer away from paying most of its U.S. taxes.

I saw this at work at my former workplace. They cut us to reduce expenses, yet are they profitable? From what I can see they haven’t come up with anything new or innovative. It’s just the same old, same old from the same drunken morons who have always run that place and a bunch of new hires getting overworked for a pittance.

And I don't buy the theory that just because someone ran a successful business they can run the country. Sure, in business, you don't want to run a deficit. With a country, sometimes you have to in order to provide essential services to its citizens. What's Romney going to do when he sees how much Social Security is costing the country? Fire everyone over age 65?

For most American corporations, it’s about keeping upper management in power and living in luxury while the rest of us can barely afford to pay rent and keep our families fed and housed. There is no balance. The entire system is tilted in their favor. It's never good for any civil society to have so much power rest with one, relatively small group.

Corporations whine about too much regulation, but with so many politicians of both parties beholden to Wall Street dollars, it’s unlikely they will get more regulation.

And it’s not as if regulation has stopped them from raking in record profits while discarding workers in record numbers. What are they worried about?

Look, I understand companies have to make profits and to make money you have to take risks. I get that. But when they take risks that fail, they cannot expect taxpayers—the same people they jettison when it suits them—to pay for their mistakes.

The most surprising aspect of the JPMorgan debacle was not that those boobs actually managed to lose $2 billion in a scheme even they couldn’t comprehend—it was that upper management actually acknowledged their fault (albeit not right away) and that some high-ranking executives actually took responsibility and resigned. (One of them was a woman from New Jersey. Perhaps now she can go on The Real Housewives of New Jersey. They need someone to smack down Teresa.)

We all must pay taxes if we want a country with a top-notch military, good schools and solid infrastructure. But all corporations want to do is avoid paying taxes. Have we become Tax Dodge Nation? It’s not like they are using the money they would have paid in taxes to fund some great new product that helps people live better lives or puts more people to work. No, instead the money is going for obscene salaries and bonuses.

Well, enough of my rant about Corporate Feudalism. Let me check my wallet to see if I have enough money to buy lunch at McDonalds.

Here We Go Again…Part 2

It was on the printer near my office cubicle. It was an agenda for a big meeting the big kahunas at work attended recently.

Naturally, my nosey nature took over and I glanced at it (hey, who left it there for all to see?). Not for long, but long enough to see some interesting agenda items, such as reviewing staffing levels to see if any positions needed to be cut (and to be fair, if positions needed to be added and where).

No, I haven’t mentioned to this anyone else in the office. For one, the deadline for these decisions, if any, aren’t until October.

Reality Check: I can’t say I’m surprised. We have a new CEO and of course it’s his mandate to review the entire company structure to ferret out inefficiencies and find areas where money can be better spent to boost revenues. Frankly, if he didn’t do that, he wouldn’t be doing his job.

Or it could be mere busy work for upper management types. What better kind than screwing around with the lives of underlings. Gives them a sense or power, I guess. They get to play God.

Nevertheless, at this point, it’s in the discussion stage. Who knows what will happen between now and the fall? He may make radical changes, or none at all. And no one knows where those changes, if any, will occur. And it’s pretty obvious that management is no rush to make these decisions, that these discussions are not being done out of desperation and panic as it was at my former employer.

So getting worried at this time is probably premature. Yet it’s just another disheartening reminder that our professional fates are being discussed in some meeting room somewhere by a group of mostly white, middle-aged males. Not very comforting.

The best we can hope for is that any dismissals are done in a respectful, thoughtful manner for the individuals whose jobs are on the line. That those of us who may lose our jobs aren’t being laid off because some douchebag supervisor wants to get rid of us for personal reasons so he or she can keep his or her incompetent lapdogs or drinking buddies on staff.


Reality Check Again: Let's not get too negative. Negative thoughts can become negative reality. There may be massive layoffs, there may none. No one, including the new CEO, knows at this point.

So what can I do? Well, this may just be the push I need to update my resume.