Interesting Interviews

Firstly, I apologize to any regular readers (all .5 of you) for being so lax in getting material up every day. I certainly have plenty of material from the last few days, but things have been harried at work, with all of us having our interest interviews (are you interested in voluntarily leaving the company?). While I noticed no one wandering the aisles rending their garments and and wailing, there were lots of stress, lots of speculation (guilty, as charged - but I've a wager resting on all this) - low level upset conditions.

I had my interview, next to the last one for the group, on Friday. Since everyone else in the department had already heard what I was hearing, I received no caveats about repeating information, etc. I was informed that my job group was a high target group for these layoffs; but don't assume that my manager was threatening or pressuring me. This was a piece of information I'd been telling everyone else in my department all week. I actually feel really sorry for my manager lorenzo (not his real name); he is not the kind of man whose heart gladdens at the thought of layoffs. And like many others, he expects these layoffs to be much more severe and debilitating than previous years' layoffs. I know that I've been working in Corporate America for a long time - too long, perhaps - when I can pretty accurately guess what the company's strategy (or lack thereof) is.

For example, the above-mentioned bet was that I said that the Powers That Be (PTB) were probably aiming to have the 60 days notice period completed by the end of the third quarter so that when the stock analysts give their ratings, make their forecasts for the 4th quarter, the news would be good and the stock value would go up for the end of the year -- all important to justify those boni. Investors see headlines that read, "Company X Lays Off Millions of Employees" and they all jump up and down, yelling 'Woo hoo! More for us!' My coworker Mr T (T for Trouble, that is) speculated that the end of the year was the target date for layoffs, not the end of fiscal Q3. Well, Mr T, you owe me that coffee - in our department, at any rate, our 60 days are up well before the end of Q3. In your face!

Apologies, dear readers - my coffee lust has led me to digress a wee bit. Returning to the interview, I asked my manager a few questions to see if my guesses about how these layoffs were being performed were educated and probably accurate, and at least received some grim satisfaction that I was generally correct. I don't want to get into a great deal of detail about how my Company X is going about things - at least, not until I officially no longer have a job. Poor lorenzo - he looked every bit the unhappy rabbit that he is these days. But don't think to offer him carrots to make him feel better - he much prefers a good donut.