Another Anniversary

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I found it ironic to look at the title of my last post. Today marks the one year anniversary of when I started my job – or rather, my former job. Out of the blue today I was informed that I have been laid off because the company is not getting the contracts that they had been hoping to get. This should not have been surprising considering that 25% of the employees were working on overhead projects while waiting for some of the expected contracts to come through. I should have forseen this possibility, but I didn’t.

Now that I am no longer employed there I guess I have free reign to rant about what a lousy company it was etc. Too bad there’s so little to complain about. It was a good company that delivered exactly what they promised to me as an employee. They treated me well and generally took care of me while I worked there.

The only complaint I have is not with the company, but with the current nature of our economy. I am not talking about the unemployment rate or the GNP or anything like that. I am talking about how different things are now from when I was growing up. As a child I was introduced to a world where employees tended to stay with one company for years and companies tended to give their full-time employees benefits such as a contract stating that their job could not be terminated without some warning (unless they violated company policies or something). Employees, in turn, were required to give notice in order to quit their jobs. Today we live in a world where people rarely stay in one job for more than a couple of years – either by choice or because of downsizing. Employment contracts or more often “at will” so that nobody needs to give any notice before the employment is over. Such was the case today. I was told “Today is your last day. We have to let some people go and you are among them. Sorry. Good luck.”

It was not that terse. They were as nice as they could be, considering that there is no nice way to say “sorry, you’re out of a job.” It’s just sad that we live in a day where stability is the exception and not the rule.