Hanging by a Thread

May 11th, 1996 Posted in Cubicle Blues

By March I’d officially lost any enthusiasm for my job. I’d simply gotten too good at it, and my company had gotten too disorganized and committed to failure to stimulate me beyond showing up and warming my seat until five. I decided right then and there to look for new work.

Unfortunately, many of my friends in Toronto are unemployed or laid off. It’s not exactly a booming job market out there. At Staff Co., we’re letting people go at a rate of about one employee a week. A close work friend got laid off yesterday, along with five others. Apparently three more getting cut later this week. Word has it the Marketing Department, of which I’m a member, is next to go.

This is how bad it’s gotten: I sat in on an interview last week for a Proposal Writer to help me out with day-to-day stuff. The woman I interviewed had seven years proposal writing experience, and another 10 managerial experience. She had degrees from two accredited institutions. She’d gotten laid off as Proposal Manager in a downsize a few months before.

“Um,” I say, looking at her ridiculously over-qualified resume. “There might be some mistake. I’m, uh… looking for an assistant.”

“That’s right. Full time if you can,” she said.

“I’ve only got three years proposal writing experience,” I said. “You’ve got… seven?”

“Yes.”

“And you want a job temping?”

“Yes.”

A pause.

“Good God, is it THAT bad out there?”

“You have no idea.”

So basically: while I look for new work when I can, I also realize that at some point, as much as I hate my job, it’s a job. I get paid. In this economy, that’s enough.

But back to my first point: I’d stopped caring months ago. Entire weeks few by where I did nothing but surf the net. It’d been months since I’d worked a late night, or started a project, or did any of the things I’d done the year before, when I’d been new at the company and eager to impress with my enthusiasm. To be honest, I think I’d simply stopped caring whether or not I’d get fired. The subconscious decision seemed to be to push the envelope as far as I could — to do as little work as humanly possible, show up as late as possible and leave as early as I could — without getting canned. A dangerous game, and one that you enter into knowing full well the inevitable outcome, if not its precise date. I sat back, did nothing, and waited to be found out.

Three months passed when I finally received some word of my performance: a $600 bonus for my efforts in the second quarter. I found this a little odd, as I’d committed absolutely no effort at all to the second quarter. Odder still, the many months last year where I had worked late all the time busting my hump, I’d received no recognition at all.

Bonuses aside, I remained convinced it was only a matter of time before the hammer fell. The company was sliding inexorably downhill into bankruptcy, and the downsizings by then had increased from one to two or three employees a week. The majority of Staff Co.’s U.S. branches had been shut down earlier in the week after working in the red for years.

Since the U.S. branches had counted for a good 70% of my proposal work, I was left with little to do. My boss, sensing the way the wind was blowing, quit a week later, killing off any representation with the higher-ups and leaving me alone in the proposal center. My department (composed of, at this point, me) got lost in the shuffle. It was only a matter of time before someone put two and two together and realized it would be more cost effective to simply axe the proposal center entirely.

And finally, the drum roll — I got called in early today. This, I realized, was actually going to be it. Maybe someone’d bothered to check up on how much time I spent on the internet. Maybe my output was measured against my hours. Who knows. But I got called into HR.

I sat down, the Director of HR in front of me.

“I’ve been going over your Q3 results,” he said.

“I see,” I said. Hmmm. Bracing myself. Bracing myself.

“I just wanted to let you know that we’ve awarded you a bonus of $1,600 in recognition of your efforts this quarter.”

“I completely understand. I’ll just pack up my things and go. Thank you for employing me as long as you did. I — wait, I’m sorry. $1,600?”

“Yes. To compensate you for your efforts.”

“I — hmm.”

“Thanks again.” Beefy handshake. Shown to the door.

I stood in the hallway for a few minutes, allowing this to sink in: apparently, the less I did… the more money I got.

Conceivably, if I stopped coming into work entirely for the next quarter, I could receive a bonus of well over $5000.