The season of crisp air, falling leaves, and, it seems, layoffs

I was talking with one of my colleagues this morning who thinks her husband might be laid off this afternoon. He has a departmental meeting at 3, and the head of HR is on the attendee list.
That is never good.
Apparently, he wasn't too concerned about it - just thought it was some kind of strategy meeting or whatever - but she reminded him that, "uh honey - I work in HR. Trust me: a 3:00 meeting with everyone and HR is never a good thing."

He's been there for 15 years, so if he is laid off, at least he'll get a good package. And she has a great stable job, so she's not worried at all. She was just surprised by his naiivte, considering that he's been married to her for 20 years and during that time has heard many stories of re-orgs and layoffs. He should know how these things go. A 3:00 meeting usually means that either everyone's being let go at once, or everyone's in the meeting while a few people are noticably absent - being informed of their termination and cleaning out their desk in peace, without the humiliation of having the rest of the department watching.

What is it about this time of year that means layoffs for companies? I wonder if statistically, the fall is a really common month for re-orgs (or "reinventions", as the Internet Franchise called it). It was the first week of November when the Internet Franchise unceremoniously laid off HALF of its employees (me not one of them), and it was the middle of last October that Insurance Hell laid off 4 out of a 14-person team (3 of them being my Communications colleagues) and again, I was spared the pink slip but given loads of extra work (super). I wonder.

Man, am I ever glad I'm not being laid off right now. I actually like my job. I like my boss. I feel that I'm doing meaningful work and I'm recognized for my contributions. It's almost unreal. And she keeps telling me that I'm not allowed to quit, because she'd go crazy. Hooray for job stability :)

A new opportunity?

Boss #1 emailed me this morning...

Happy new year and I hope you are doing well.
I will be trying to arrange something for the Job1’ers in early February.
A communications/pr position has become available in our HR department and the last time we talked you were not that interested in your current position. I am sending you the job description – it is full time but if you are still interested in contract they may be willing to go that way. Its interesting times for this position as our parent company is merging with a big media company and so the communications and pr may be very interesting.
If you're not interested but know someone who might, feel free to pass this along.
Boss1

Needless to say, my curiosity is piqued. Boss1 has raved about the Publisher since she started there, on the same day I started at the Insurance Nightmare. She's acutally already recruited a few others from Job1, and they all love it there. So ya, I'll be submitting my resume.

Birk's career at The Internet Franchise - in a Dilbert comic

"Pushing the Limits" - Day 2

I'm working from home again today, but because of the weather this time, not just because I don't feel like going.

So I'm at home again, and only feeling slightly guilty about it. I wouldn't feel bad at all, if I hadn't spent most of yesterday's work day playing on Facebook, MSNing with an old old flame, watching daytime TV, and generally shirking work.

Hey look - I'm shirking again! Watch me shirk!

And tomorrow, I have have an interview/writing assessment dealie at 10:30 in the morning, so I'll be working from home again!

I'm so lucky that this week the 'big guys' at the company are in the UK at a conference, so my absence will only be noticed by my colleagues (and the majority of them are looking for other jobs anyway).

So, on today's list:

• sit on my couch (check!)


• eat a bagel with a banana cut up on it and a coffee (check!)


• keep my work email open just in case (check!)


• send a Valentine's e-card to my honey


• go out and buy a real Valentine's card for him


• make homemade waffles for dinner - with melted Toblerone and sliced straberries on it. Maybe I'll make it a full-fledged fondue. It's Valentine's day, we're allowed!


• do a bit of work - I have some files to upload to a new marketing DMS that's being launched at the conference on Friday, so I should probably get that all squared off today. After all, I am getting paid today.

And that ought to do it!

'Working' from home

I'm working from home today, and by working I mean that I have my work email open and that's about it.

What I'm really doing is chatting on MSN with my very first boyfriend. Bizarre. I joined facebook a couple days ago, and there he is! So now we're catching up - he's engaged, and seems like he's finally got his shit together.

He just apologised for being an ass to me. I don't remember him being an ass, but apology accepted. Memory is a strange thing - I think I've glossed over a lot of that. I remember him fondly. I remember him playing guitar for me, and us sitting at this little park by his house. He was a nice guy in the 'tortured artist' kind of way. He was my first boyfriend, and my 'first'. We dated for 8 months, which felt like forever when I was 16/17.

Very, very weird.

Faux Sick is way better than Real Sick

I got up this morning at 6:05, checked my work email, looked at the weather, and decided "fuck this". I emailed work saying I'm not feeling well, and then promptly went back to bed. I think if I didn't take a day off work soon, I'd go postal. I really REALLY hate my job these day, and I'm a really unpleasant person because of it. I needed a day off for everyone's sake.

So, I got up at 10:30, and now I'm watching CityLine, eating an omelette, drinking a coffee, and chilling in my jamies. There's nothing better. I'm calm, I'm content, and the likelihood of me throwing my computer out the window has been reduced sigificantly since yesterday.

Today is the day of Daphne. Here's how it's going to go.

On my list today:

• go shopping for underwear (new frillies always make me happy)
• go to H&M... and try not to spend too much
• get a coffee from starbucks
• Buy a bouquet of flowers for myself just because
• Buy the new Jann Arden CD
• Take some stuff down to storage - clutter makes me crazy
• Vaccuum - the house is horrid and it makes me angry
• Pick up some groceries, like lettuce and milk
• Bake some bran and pineapple muffins

And when all of that is said and done, I'm going to sit down with a book and read.
And with any luck, the universe will flip upside down and a new job will fall on my lap, and I won't have to kill anyone at work tomorrow.

Back from the most ill-planned business trip of all time

Well, I'm back from Vegas, and I don't have any great insights I feel like posting. Well, I have tons I want posted, but I don't feel like actually posting them. It's a vicious cycle, I know.

One thing's certain: I don't like Vegas, just as I suspected I wouldn't. It's everything I dislike about the States, rolled into a big ball, multiplied by five hundred chinging slot machines and covered in sparkly neon lights, being rolled along by loud, crass, belching men in "I Heart Sin City" Tshirts next to their boob-jobbed, red tube top clad arm candy girlfriends. Blech - tacky.
My favourite part of my stay was sitting in my in-room hot tub for an hour reading a book late Tuesday night. I'm such a party animal :)

The multi-level marketing platform I went to check out makes me drool - gimme. Seriously. It would make my job uber fantastic. Now, we just have to convince the upper echilon at the company that it should be 'core' - meaning that they'd think it's imporant enough to actually SPEND MONEY on.

Daphne's prediction: Not gonna happen. They'll try to convince this company to give it to us for free because "they'd benefit from a partnership with us" - but the company is actually too smart for that, so they'll tell us to shove it hard and sideways up an uncomfortable spot. And poor little Daphne will be left communicating in the old-fashioned way - only one step ahead of sending out snail mail or leaving post-its on everyone's monitors whenever I have something to tell them.

That's just my prediction though.



In other work-related news - Birk (another surviving Marketing member) thinks he's going to get canned - and actually hopes he will b/c it would make him (1) leave (2) get a new job, and (3) stop hating the hours between 9 and 5 so much.
Also, the Event Planner thinks she has less than 3 weeks before she's also 'made redundant'.

We were daydreaming today about how satisfying it would be if the Marketing team (3 of us) and the Event Planner were to all walk out one day - I think we could just print off 4 copies of my brother's resignation letter (that has already been tailored and used by one person at our company), and just fill in the blanks in pen and leave it on the new boss' desk.

That would be the second best day of my life (right below January 30th, 2006 - the day I got to put a sparkly ring on my finger AND go see Bon Jovi). Honestly - right up there. Better than my 24th birthday in Bologna, Italia; Better than the day I found myself singing in the centre of a 2000 year old pink marble roman amphitheatre. Better than any day spent entirely in bed. Better than that day in grade 3 that Bobby Murray got in shit for stealing my favourite eraser (jerkface) or the day I got my grade 5 teacher on probation for being a sexist prick. Better than pretty much anything.

If only...

Luring me to the Dark Side?

My job is freaking crazy. My new VP - who I thought hated us and was plotting to make the marketing department work ourselves out of jobs - is trying to win me over.

Next week, she's taking me to Vegas to get a demo of a new multi-level marketing and communications system. Yesterday, she gave me a 'corporate hand job' telling me how she's been nothing but impressed with me so far, but thinks I have an untapped talent that I haven't been able to use in my position. I now have full license to draw up a new communications strategy for the whole company, and run with it. And she's getting me into more PR - which I told her I didn't want to be doing. She was surprised, since I'm such an outgoing person, but I explained that I bloody hate writing press releases - so she told me I could outsource them and concentrate on what I actually like doing.

I go in waves with this job. After yesterday, I'm more stressed, but, I actually like what I'm stressing about. Developing a new comm strategy will be challenging but rewarding, and the company really needs it.

I'm still looking for a new job though :)

K, off to work!

Not a good start

Day one under a new VP and I've already had 4 projects dumped on me on top of my existing ones. That's after a 4 hour **useless** 'aligning of priorities/brainstorming session.
Great. Take four hours out of my work day and then give me new projects to complete... when? Bugger.


Oh, if only I could quit on the spot.... if only my wedding wasn't going to cost me my kidney...


...Do I dare disturb the universe? Do I dare to eat a peach?...

The ship is sinking... time to jump

So my VP was fired unceremoniously yesterday - ahem, I mean, she "is no longer with the company". Apparently, they had her office half cleaned before she even came in to work. Rat bastards.

This leaves the Marketing Department (well, what's left of us after a massive reorg [I mean "reinvention"] we had not two months ago) wondering what our role us without the VP of Marketing. We now report to the VP Operations, and none of us is happy about this.

All the more reason to finish my resume and get a fabulous new job.

I guess I won't have any problems asking my former VP for a reference now.


At least I got to the gym yesterday... that was the only non-crappy thing about the whole day.