Just before 9am, the whole crew logged into "meeting" status and we slowly ambled our way into the St. John's Conference Room. It was a somewhat tight squeeze but all 13 of us snuggled in around the large conference table and sat nervously fidgeting in awkward silence. Some brought notepads and used them as handy tools to look prepared. Patricia, having left for the Philippines over the weekend, joined us on speaker phone. Few dared look too intently into the face of Sharon, our manager who had flown in from Springfield to hold this mandatory team meeting. It didn't take her long to get to the point."Due to the department's plan of consolidation it's been decided that there would need to be a reduction in workforce. Therefore, the Customer Care unit in Heathrow will be closing."
She went on to explain the layoff in more detail and she did express herself sounding sympathetic and caring. But when it was all said and done, it just meant that our dire suspicions were finally confirmed. We'd all soon be out of a job.
Of course the writing was on the wall even before the recent changes in VP and his bold cost-cutting measures. When Sharon had come here to Florida in October last year, she reduced the then-much-larger crew by half in one fell swoop. Of course it was all temps back then and we FTEs breathed a guilty sigh of relief. But I knew Madame Guillotine would be back...it was only a matter of time.
This day could be just as "black" for Ric as well. Ric works just across the highway in a nice campus-like office building with a big logo above its windows: AIG.
Unlike our belt tightening which is pretty much confined to our department within Symantec, he went to work today probably unsure if the entire company he works for would survive for much longer...at least in the form he had become used to. I'll find out more soon, I expect.
As far as our drama today though, a few things are in place to make the bitter news a bit easier to bear. First, the effective end date of our positions will be November 14...two months away. That's good, so we'll all be able to save up as much as possible. Also, we will be eligible for the severance package which is tenure-based in it's payout amount. (For me, it's looking like it'll be about 6 weeks)
Interestingly, about the severance package, since it's based on how many years you were with the company, I hope the little glitch I discovered today isn't detected...you see, in the intranet HR site that displays one's employment information, my account, for some reason, has my start date as 1/1/1900. If our payroll system factors my package based on this, and no one catches it, I figured it out that I'd be looking at a check of about $128,000! Oh baby, let's hope it's a totally computer controlled thing! It'd be a Happy Thanksgiving for sure! Until they discovered the error and come after me for it. But I'd be long gone by then.
BTW, as a little FYI: Despite the graphic I chose above, today actually is the day of the full moon.