"[Office Story] Watching the slow collapse...." Topic

Disclaimer: *insert standard Murph disclaimer here*

Okay…so it's been a while.
For those of you not knowing, our it tech support (me and 174 others in 2 locations), have been outsourced by the "Dude!" company…
We are at the 15 day mark.
It's interesting to see the human socio-psychological condition of those who are still here. I am going to break it down into the following categories:

1: The "gone"…These are people who either jumped ship at the earliest opportunity and took another job within the same company, or another company, or said "screw it" and quit early.

2: The "diehards"…These are few people that believe in doing the company routine with the false hopes of "just maybe someone will notice them at the last moment and they get an offer or a reprieve or something." They are the ones that still tally call ratios and metrics that six months ago people were screaming at us about, but now no one even cares to monitor or still send reports and charts that no one cares to read.
They are the ones saying "I still care! The company can't just do this to us!"
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight…dream on sucker.

3: The "doomed and the d*mned": This is the majority of the people here. They haven't left due to the fact of A: Severance packages, or B: They haven't found anything yet or anyone willing to hire them, or C: They are sado-masochistic in the way of just seeing how bad it gets.

I think I am in category three. To be honest I am not even thinking about job hunting until next week. I know the cycle and I am waiting for the July indicators to let me know what August is going to be like. Plus I am looking at other fields other than IT.

It is interesting to watch people though slowly and sadly realize that the company that they gave years of service to simply tossed their loyalty and usefulness out like yesterdays trash, simply to augment the CFO's bottom line and send their jobs to Malaysia and Panama.
It's nothing about quality of work, it's simply that the CFO and the board are trying to make as much moola as possible before the ever mounting issues of possible ethics and compliance violations, along with a possible removal of them by stockholders in the event of further decreased profits of their stocks, will allow them to leave with as much cash as they can carry…

Me…i don't care. I've already told my manager that when the day comes that we can steal office supplies, I've got dibs on the Printer/Copier in the copy room…and a couple of nice flatscreens here.

I'm thinking that starting towards the end of next week, some of this equipment is going to start "dissappearing"…
It's only natural.

How do you motivate people that don't care?
Honestly you can say…"Work or get fired", but the Managers mentality is, "what's the use of that? I fire them, we screw the people that are still working here even more." So those that are here no longer worry about call times, metrics and ratios, and talk averages.
We do what we can, and that's about it, and if you don't like it, welllll..call back on August 8th and talk to Malaysia or Panama…they might be able to help.

I'll report more later on as things come down, including perhaps the story of "The girl that is trying to sleep with all the techs"…

Submitted Respectfully;
Murphy

Ah yes, the death spiral of the coroporate bumble bee. I left my last company after 7 years of continuous reorganization/down sizing, I'd had enough and the severance package let me pay off my debts and move on. They are now acquiring another company, the only purpose of which is to acquire their drug products and pipeline. The top 5 execs of the victim company get 75 million to divide amongst themselves and 19000 people lose their jobs. Neither company improves, competition is reduced and more unemployed. Screw them, screw them all. Stop the bailout madness.

When this happened to me, the remaining staff spent any available downtime constructing the deadliest paper airplanes out of post-it notes, paperclips and rubberbands. The winner was whoever could get their airplane the deepest into the ceiling tiles.

Those that didn't want to participate in that contest could build gliders solely out of post-it notes and see who could fly the farthest. Fortunately, we were in an older skyscraper which had windows that could open. A well-built glider from the 14th Floor could soar a long way.

We stayed for the health insurance. The company declared the last day to be on the first of the month, so employees could have that month with health insurance without having to deal with COBRA.

"We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganization; and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization."

- Petronius Arbiter – Greek Navy – 210 BC

Things never change.

Quick, we need to send more motivational posters to Murphy's office, that'll raise morale!

You know the type: despair.com/lithographs.html

Careful, Murph. Walking out with a flatscreen et al. might be viewed as more than petty theft, should the company decide to prosecute. No matter what they've chosen to do, it's still their stuff, and stealing is stealing.

Allow me to play devil's advocate for a bit. Yeah, it sucks when companies do this sort of thing. But aside from whether you or the people around you view the outsourcing move as a bad decision (and you're naturally biased against it), what exactly does anybody have to complain about? "They took my job away!"? No, they took their job away. The work belongs to the company, not the employee. The company can have it done however they like wherever they like at whatever they're willing/able to pay. And it appears they weren't willing/able to pay y'all. BUT…

Did they pay the employees what they said they would for the work the employees did?
Has the company continued to pay the employees even though, as you indicate, very few employees are actually doing the work they are being paid to do?

Yes, it is all bad management, poor employee relations, and so forth… but remember, they could have just locked the doors and stopped the checks, instead of continuing a process that at least allows employees to look for other opportunities with a paycheck coming in.

As for company loyalty to the employees, I'm curious as to how much "loyalty" the employees would have evidenced towards the company had the situation been reversed in some way— for example if a competitor had offered better salaries or benefits, would your fellow employees have said, "No, I need to be loyal to this company as thanks for all the money they've put in my pocket during my time here."?

Somehow I seriously doubt it.

Okay, DA bit over, and I don't mean to tread on anyone's personal toes. Job loss sucks, but the truth is that in most cases it's an opportunity, if you know how to view it that way. Find work you love to do among people you love to do it with, and do that. Then it won't be us vs. them— it will just be "us."

Take down some walls, clean some fish and photo copy your butt………

The Chinese who were taking over the production of the gates and fences I was designing thanked me for the fine drawings I produced for them, so they could make the parts right.
I thought that was awfully ing nice of them.

If I ever thought being self-employed wasn't "the way", I certainly do NOW! (But I always have…)

As for company loyalty to the employees, I'm curious as to how much "loyalty" the employees would have evidenced towards the company had the situation been reversed in some way— for example if a competitor had offered better salaries or benefits, would your fellow employees have said, "No, I need to be loyal to this company as thanks for all the money they've put in my pocket during my time here."?

As the owner of a small business it would be nice to see the people working there actually care more about the business than what they get out of it…..I am probably asking too much.

As the owner of a small business it would be nice to see the people working there actually care more about the business than what they get out of it…..I am probably asking too much.

Yep.

The basis of capitalism is mutual exploitation. I like it best when it remains that way, because it's at least honest.
-Kle.

As the owner of a small business it would be nice to see the people working there actually care more about the business than what they get out of it…..I am probably asking too much.

Strangely enough, this place was VERY LOYAL to the company. These are some of the best people I've ever worked with. It was the way the entire affair was handled and how the HR rep was smiling at each person with a "loser" look on her face, and how they had told us for months before hand, how we were "expanding the IT dept, how many more techs were going to be needed, etc…" only to find out that this was being done behind the scene.
And then the IT Infrastructure Spin Doctor has the nerve to hold a mandatory meeting to give a lecture and PP slideshow about "how the current system is going to be expanded to handle all the increased work and how "Good" it is…"

When you have a "suit", telling you "yada yada I'll make more money", while you are losing your job, What do you really expect?

HR rep was smiling at each person with a "loser" look on her face.."

I don't know-it seems that it would be a real tough position to be in. How the hell do you handle telling all these people that they are going to lose their jobs in one of the worst recessions we've had? Unless your HR person was a psychopath, it probably was pretty awful.

"Job loss sucks, but the truth is that in most cases it's an opportunity, if you know how to view it that way."

Seems to me to be an overally broad statement. I think there are millions of people who've lost fantasic jobs and never recover to their lost standard of living. It especially hurts when you get laid off passed the age of 40. After my father was laid off, it took almost 7-8 years to find steady work and he was a hard worker. He was pushing 50-and no one-and I mean no one wanted to give him a chance. He was a laid off division manager-he used to run three divisions. He finally found work as a janitor. He loved the job and the kids, but he was defintely underemployed for the rest of his working life. He was/is as positive of a guy that you'll ever meet, but there wasn't much for an unemployed middle manager.

The secret is to realize that you work for yourself, not for others. People get stuck in the idea that they have to have a "job"— i.e., that they have to be employed by someone else. No, you have to "work"— but "work" doesn't mean "be paid by a company" or "have a boss." It may, if you enjoy that sort of environment and are cut out for it. But it could just as easily (and more effectively) mean that you have a business doing something you enjoy. If a person has management skills, then they could just as easily manage a business of their own as manage someone else's.

My father is an engineer, and he loves engineering. He started out at Monsanto, then went to work at the Tennessee Valley Authority National Fertilizer Research and Development Center, in part because Monsanto wanted to promote him out of engineering. When I was in high school, my father decided that he wanted to work for himself. In 1980, he struck out on his own as a consultant. It was a tough time and a big risk, giving up the salary and government benefits. But my father was doing what he loved, and he used all the experience he gained from Monsanto and TVA to build a company that now employs over 150 people, researching, designing and building chemical plants around the world. (By the way, if you have a garden and use fertilizer that comes as little brownish-yellow granules, thank my father. That's "sulfur coated urea" and he invented it and the process to make it. It's a particularly cost effective fertilizer for farmers, and all the major fertilizer companies produce it— and my father's company builds their plants. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say my father's work feeds the world. And he still loves it.)

Yeah, SOME people have that sort of ability. Many more do not. The important difference is do they KNOW they don't…

The last graphics job I worked back in the late 80's early 90's was at a company which had just been bought by an engineer who had been asked to leave his job. He read a book about graphics and then bought the company I was working for as Art Director. He then proceeded to run it into the ground-- underbidding jobs and then trying to change the bids, correcting me and others who had been in graphics for a decade (and often way more), and in general mismanaging the whole affair. I asked him, nay, begged him to take at least a half a step back and let us make money for him. He angrily refused and said it was HIS company and he would do as he pleased.

I quit on the spot. Then I went and opened my own company with another of this dweeb's ex-employees and we took ALL his work away from him and put him out of business. We did everything ethically and legally, by the way, and proved categorically that Quality wins in the end. I guess I should thank him, because if he had taken that half a step back I'd probably have stayed there for years in a dead end job rather than starting my own business.

The point is is that not everybody can do it. Heck, because of changing technology my company only lasted 3-4 years. Then I just went free-lance and I made even more money with way less overhead. But most of the folks I have known who have tried to do what I do simply can't be self-employed. They need someone to tell them what to do and when to do it ALL the time.

As I mentioned in another thread, it seemed kinder when they laid us all off to call us all into a room and say, "The company has been sold and everyone in this room is out of a job. Your severance package is X." Then some additional stuff about final payment, cobra, etc.

So we packed our stuff and several of us retired to a nearby pub. A few of the survivors came by after a while. The company is going into maintenance mode, so there will be very little interesting work to do. I now feel better about having been laid off and gotten a nice severance package, cobra, unemployment compensation, etc.

Now, off to building up Great Hall Games!

Rob

Keep in mind that the concept of working for a company is relatively new in historic terms, so I'm rather skeptical of the notion that "some people can't work for themselves." Sure they can; they just don't. They're stuck in a way of thinking which they can't or won't break out of. It's kind of sad, really. It's the twenty-first century, and some people still only think of themselves as glorified serfs.

The truth is that no matter what, you are working for yourself. I don't mean that you are selfish or self-centered, or that you don't work with others. I mean that if you realize that your effort and skills belong to you and that they are not determined by someone else, you can work better and stronger and more effectively than the poor schmoe who's attitude is just to get the paycheck— and you'll reap due rewards, too. You'll also realize that when unexpected change comes your way, you have the power and ability to take your effort and skills in a new direction chosen by you. Lose the idea that you're a cog, and you won't be one. That's exactly what Nazrat describes, and it supports my point.

But you do have to truly know what your skills and talents are— and most importantly what experience to keep and what to reject, because it's all too easy to get caught up in the idea that "I've done X for twenty years, so I have to keep doing X." No you don't— especially if X isn't what you're cut out for or drawn to. In fact, continuing to do X if it's not who you are is a certain way to drain your spirit and crush your passion. DUMP it and MOVE ON. There really are other ways!

Nazrat's example is also a good one pointing out the difference between doing what you're good at and are drawn to and just trying to "make money." It's rather clear to me that his former boss had no love for the graphics art field; the guy just wanted a business that "made money," but he also wanted to "run it." Bad choice, both ways. The man didn't know himself. He didn't know his gifts, he didn't know his skills, and he didn't know his passion. That's a recipe for disaster.

So find out your gifts. Notice what you are drawn to, and where your passions lie. Chuck the cog mentality and realize you're an engine— then rev up and go!

Great advice, but unfortunately it's not so easy for some people.

Unfortunately(?), I have a family with a certain standard of living including 2 daughters who will be going to college in a few years. The company I work for pays me a lot of money to do what I do. Most would consider my job to be pretty easy as far as working conditions, it just requires experience and brains. I don't hate it but I don't have a passion for it either.

I really doubt I could make as much money doing anything else. Maybe I'll change someday when I don't feel my responsibility to my family comes first. Until then, I'll be working for the man.

While working for a company is new, the concept of working for someone else is ages old. As a matter of fact, it seems that a standard for centuries for most people was not only did you work for someone else, but that someone else ordered your entire life, making decisions about marriage, residence, etc. I would argue that the idea of individual independence and self-reliance is what is relatively new.