Saturday 28 February, 2004 at 9:32PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (5)

Last Tuesday at around 11am I was busy working when suddenly the phones all went dead, followed moments later by the computers. It didn't take long for me and those around me to guess what was going on. A big group of management and security people gathered by the exit and formed a kind of corridor from there to a conference/training room. In groups of about twenty, staff members disappeared into that room for about 10 minutes at a time and then emerged and were directed down the 'corridor' and out the door. Eventually my turn came.

Inside was VP Chris (I'm not going to mention last names or the name of the company itself since it could mean risking some sort of litigation, especially with this particular company). To cut a long story short, we were all being laid off due to 'restructuring', which to the best of my knowledge usually means they're trying to save their collective asses from going under, especially when it's 500 staff being relieved of duty at the corp HQ where I was based.

Unfortunately they don't believe in redundancy payments or anything like that in New Jersey - you can get rid of employees without reason if you wish (which is probably why they had their offices in New Jersey instead of New York), so there's no X amount of weeks of pay given or anything like that, it's just "game over dude, thanks for playing!" ..at least I won't be traveling 4+ hours a day just to get to and from work.

The VP said he was only informed late the previous evening of what was happening, and I believe him. He looked pretty upset and his eyes were red like he was about to burst into tears. Can't be easy telling 500+ people that they're out of work effective immediately. At least he still has a job though (for now anyway).

There's quite a few people who worked there with families to support etc who are going to be up shit creek without a paddle, they must be freaking out big time with the way things are at the moment here job-wise. There were quite a few people working there that I worked with previously as an 'executive producer' at a UK-based television company last year (which subsequently went belly-up in the US). Many of the others in my area were stock brokers. Now we're all unemployed.

There's a large furniture company that have huge showrooms near where we live and also in Manhattan. It's a family business that's been running for many years, generations even. Earlier this evening they had an ad on tv - they're having a 'going out of business' sale. They aren't selling the business (I guess in the current economy they can't find a buyer) so they're just shutting it down. Not good, but typical of how things are at the moment. Now I have to go through all the apply apply apply & interview thing again. Not exactly confidence building stuff. Such is life in New York City in the double-oh's, baby.