Learning a Lesson

This wound up on my feed. A dude, appears to be a younger one, maybe thirties, got laid off and is processing it:

This is a lesson that nearly all of us learn, about that age it seems.

• The company doesn’t care about you.
• You aren’t “family”
• Never make the company or a job a priority in your life

I did this. Granted, I had a stressful job that required me to be on-call. When I became a boss, it went from a week a month or so to all the time. I remember losing it and yelling at my wife. She was crying, my daughter was crying, and I got a moment of clarity.

What was I doing making this group of people stress me to the point of doing that?

I quickly changed.

I don’t think it was too long after that I left.

Loyalty has it’s place. I’d do about anything for the boss I had five years ago or so, before we were purchased. He, and all the executives, stuck by me when I was going through cancer therapy. This company, I have no such loyalty. I did tell my boss (at the time), years ago, that I wouldn’t put in my two weeks and retire suddenly. I didn’t promise, however, that I wouldn’t do so if I found a new job.

Guys are loyal. I get it. But the next time he’ll be wiser.

• Draw your boundaries. You don’t owe them your life or soul.
• Nothing comes before your family, especially the kids.
• Don’t do what this guy did and not take vacations. It won’t be appreciated. You earned the time off, take it. And don’t let them screw it up for you. Schedule it. A deal’s a deal.

I remember giving advice to a tech trainee when I was a crew chief. He was getting caught up in the drama that was going down there at the time. Basically, our boss screwed around with one of the owner’s fiancee, who was a manager there as well. All hell broke loose.

I told him to stay away from that shit. Show up, on-time, do your job and learn as much as you can. You’ll be able to get a job anywhere. This company may only be a stepping stone for you.

Man, did I get grief for telling him that. But not even a year later, he got cut loose when it was slow. I chatted with him on his way out. He told me I was right on the money and thanked me for that advice. He was probably younger than the dude in the video.

My point was what that guy had to learn – they aren’t family and don’t get caught up in drama thinking you’re part of it. They’ll chew you up and spit you out just because.

It’s worse in a huge corporate like where I work. The old CEO would use the family analogy all the time. Yet, they’d disappear people twice a year. Few would know. They’d simply no longer be on email. They’d disperse layoffs all over so they wouldn’t fall afoul of government layoff laws and works councils.

We have a new CEO appointed. He doesn’t start until April. The stock price got hammered. The market sees this as a move to break the place into pieces, as if they weren’t doing that already. The board chair so much as said so. The chatter on the interwebs (thelayoff.com) is that they’ll spill blood in April, before the dude starts. Then again in June, before the end of the fiscal year. Makes sense. I spend a lot of time wondering how this or that makes us money, or why a customer would buy our stuff at all. Every product I see them crowing about, someone else has something better.

I’m ambivalent about the whole thing. It may be a blessing.

It behooves me to wait and see if a package is coming, then simply hit my part-time retirement phase early.

I won’t be missed there, and I don’t really care.