I have been dealing with my leg like it's a pain in the ass. Since September I have not taken the injury seriously, thinking worst case scenario, I would get one of those metal legs like you see on all those athletes in the new commercials of Gatorade or any other sports specific advertisements. Today, the fear of fears was finally put in front of me. My supervisor texted to check on my healing and then dropped a bombshell on me. We had a layoff, three people were let go, and then she said we were all going to have a reduction in pay. We are a small company with only about nineteen people, we all know each other and each person affects us all.
One of the guys was one of the original guys of the group, and had been around probably over thirty years. I hate to know he is gone, he was a likable guy but he got stuck in a technique that stopped being a money producer long ago. The second guy laid off was one of the smartest persons I have ever known. He knew his stuff, didn't make a lot of noise and was truly an asset. Again, he just happened to be running a toolset which did not yield much income and that has to matter, at some point. The third guy was a surprise, other than again, the decision seem to be mostly tied to the contributions to the bottom line. The third guy took care of every small detail, from keeping an eye on our networks, to keeping the main lab clean and the tools in there up. He was not involved day to day on any toolsets, but when I joined the group, he did train me in SEM and FIB, which I did for about fifteen years.
I was not told how significant of a cut in pay we are going to experience, so it is still scary but at this point we should call ourselves the lucky ones.
This is almost like one of my bad dreams come true. Every time I have gone on vacation, I worry coming back that things at work have changed, such as we are closed or we have lost people and we don't all work there anymore. I really want to go back now, to find out about some things. We had some new customers pending results and one of the reasons I made the move to chemistry. I am hoping the layoffs are not the result of them knowing we did not get the contract.
I really did not think this was an option, I was sure that even if things got bad, we would somehow still be safe. I know this is somewhat naïve of me, but since we split from the larger Spansion (now Cyprus), about ten years ago, we have never entertained the idea of letting people go. I only hope that now that we got rid of the purchases in Boston at the beginning of the year and now letting go of the three people and introducing this pay cut we become profitable and we can go forward much more lean and efficient. I would hate to be on the wrong side of the layoff, but again, I always try to stay busy, and that was one of the main reasons I wanted to make the move to the new section, I hated going in and barely having stuff to do for so long. I guess if I paid attention, the writing has been on the wall for some time.
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