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Laid Off
What is the good of being a genius if you cannot use it as an excuse for being unemployed?
-- Gerald Barzan
Monday, February 12, 2001
Three years ago: Support
I got to work at a normal time, and heard a tell-tale beeping noise from the server room. Our site was up ok, though. So I went in the server room to see what I could see.
We've added hardware and switches lately, so I couldn't quite tell which machine was having the problem. I called Chip at home and got his voice mail.
He called me back, and asked me if I'd gone through my email yet. Well, no, I hadn't, except for scanning the subject lines to see if there was something urgent that would explain why there was a beeping machine in the server room! (I wouldn't have minded some bulletin that would mean I didn't have to do anything.) So Chip got to give me this news: cash had dropped to where he'd decided to make substantial cuts to the site. No more commentary! So, no more me, and no more Arthur Hill (he'd been our technical analyst). The other experts had contributed in return for exposure or trade, so there wasn't any problem getting them off the site. But Chip really felt bad about laying off Arthur and me.
He talked me through this, me saying "Okay" between each sentence. I'm sure he sent email so that I'd have already absorbed this news (and not come into work this morning?), but I'm really not (I mean, I really wasn't) in the habit of reading my work email from home unless I'm expecting something that I would have needed to take care of.
So I rebooted the server that needed rebooting, then went to my desk and read his message. This occurence wasn't totally unexpected -- I'd known that we might need to cut back, and we couldn't cut back the charting, since that's the business's life blood. But I hadn't realized we were cutting it so close. Ouch!
Chip was generous enough to offer to pay for half of my vested shares in the company for me, and leave it up to me whether to buy any more. I could also take my company computer, office chair, and even the TV that had been bought for the office that we'd never gotten going (the building owner had wanted a monthly fee for the roof space for the small satellite dish, darn him! and Chip wasn't putting up with that).
I forwarded Chip's mail to Jack and my sister M----. Jack called me right away, and was as comforting and kind as possible. He immediately offered to have me come and stay for a few weeks. I'll spend some time up there, but maybe not that long.
I was a bit teary, but not sobbing uncontrollably.
* * * * * * * *
Chip came into work an hour or so later. I think this was tough on him! I told him that I didn't feel up to doing the work of ripping all my stuff off the site, which he totally understood. Kellie will do that. My last paycheck will be this Thursday.
It's hard to leave! I've been with Stockcharts.com for around a year and a half, and really enjoyed it. But our timing was a bit off, I guess.
I stayed around the office for a while, packing up some things, then took off. I'll return tomorrow to finish up the packing.
* * * * * * * *
Ironically, I still had the books I'd put in my car yesterday, so I decided to take them to the used book store anyway. I got over twenty dollars in credit, picked out a novel or two, then treated myself to lunch at the Joy Wok Express. Sigh...
I decided to pamper myself (and I haven't been able to find the little pink bag where I keep my nail stuff) so I went to Bartells and bought a new toenail clipper (oo the luxury -- it has a built-in clipping catcher), and a set of healing garden peppermint foot stuff, like lotion, powder, scrubbing stuff. I also found some Clairol Herbal Essence shampoo, original scent! When they brought it back some years ago, they had the name but created different products. I always liked how that stuff smelled.
I'm lucky enough to have enough cash in the bank that being out of work for a while won't be a huge problem for me.
I'd been debating about whether to go with Jack to Radcon, a science fiction convention this weekend in Eastern Washington. No difficulty with it now!
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