Sick Inducing Day

Have you ever gone to work and been told something that really makes your guts go crazy and you feel like you want to puke? Just had one of those days.

Let me paint the background: Where I work we have had a fairly good time as we had a partner supporting us in terms of work being shop loaded on a constant basis, constant cash flow coming in which meant we could expand. About 14 months ago our working partner company started to fall apart (not due to their fault, more of a political strangle) and eventually ceased trading a few months back.

In those 14 months our company has survived by scrapping together the available work loads here and there. Remember that during the good times we expanded...and expanded in a BIG way so when our 'partner' dropped off the face of the earth we were left with a big cash flow problem.

Recently there had been a few hush'hush meetings with the MD, HR and Managers (one at a time).

So roll forwards to today. Just like any other working day, people turned up, some did work, others sat there twiddling their thumbs.

At 12:30pm, we were all summoned to the main shop floor, an audience with the MD, Deupty MD and HR Director.

We all knew the company has been struggling for a long time now with the sudden decrease in cashflow.

It was announced there would be 52 redundancies and that the affected people would be called into a personal consultation to discuss about why they were chosen etc.

To put it in scale, 52 redundancies equates to 31% of the current work force that is employed right now. My heart sunk...was I out of a job? What would I do if I was affected? The gravity of it all hit me hard. For the next two hours I contemplated the chances of being fired.

By the end of the working day, all people affected had been seen and somehow our department survived this cull...at least for now. The feeling of dread from losing what could be a secure job to a very uncertain future was colossal. I couldn't even eat lunch.

So here I am now, a survivor of the first round of culling and feeling sympathy for all those who have been selected to go. Some choices I could understand, others baffled me. From Managers through to the lowest employee were not safe in the cull. Was so surprised at some of the people who had been called up.

Today I now know how small the thread of employment is where I work. Financially unstable, over staffed and over sized, we were either bound to go bankrupt or drastically downsize. It turns out to be the latter.

It's been a harsh old day today. We will see what tomorrow brings.


PS I was sure I was one of the 52 as recently I was the root cause of costing the company approximately $100,000. Perhaps I should just go stack shelves at a supermarket. Easy life.