Yes. When your manager or supervisor pops his/her grim visage into your office doorway and utters these words, close out the Smurf porn on your work PC and take a deep breath: you are being laid off.
It happened to me this way. I was minding my own business, sipping coffee, chatting online with a friend who, ironically enough, had been laid off three weeks earlier, when my manager showed up at my office.
There had been a scare moments earlier when my friend mistook my absence due to a coffee run for me being paid a visit by the aptly named "angel of death."
The Google Chat conversation went something like this (I have used the name "John" to protect my friend's dubious identity, and to demonstrate how unoriginal I can be when selecting false names):
John: Dude? You there?
(some time elapses while I meander over to Starbucks for a tall Americano. My G-Chat button turns orange indicating that I am away from my computer)
Upon my return, I see his waiting message. I respond.
Perseus: Hey
John: Phew. You didn't reply and I thought they had come to get you.
Perseus: Ha. No. Just went for some coffee.
At that precise moment, after I hit the return key, my manager arrived, requesting that I join him in the conference room.
My breath caught in my throat as I nodded at the disembodied head in the doorway. I rose from my seat like a lifeless automaton and ambled numbly behind my lumbering manager.
I was paraded out into the main office area for all of my colleagues to gaze upon with a mixture of relief that it wasn't them and pity (more the former than the latter).
A circus act. A sacrificial lamb. A poor bastard being led to his professional demise.
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