I am still employed.
Not entirely sure why, at this point; let’s look at the reasons I had to be hopeful.
The 2008 numbers are up The person who crunched the numbers is gone.
My manager wasn’t called upon to axe people My manager is also gone.
But the axe is now done swinging, and it bit deep throughout our department. Between today’s layoffs and the voluntary separation offer that went out at the tail end of last year, we’ve lost 10 people out of 40-45.
I’ve heard that other parts of the company are getting hit harder.
And the PA just called for medical emergency response team to the area where they’re offering the next-step career counseling – so either someone just had a breakdown, or someone went postal. Probably the former, but the latter is not completely without precedent.
This has been a brutal day, during which I have seen far too many hard-working and dedicated people, many of them friends, join the ranks of the unemployed.
Those of us who are left have a meeting in a little over an hour, during which we will presumably discuss how on earth we’re all going to structure our work from here on out. It probably won’t be pretty.
But I will be here for it, and for that I am very grateful.
That Other Blog, Way Over There 
I am grateful as well, but still worried. Sure, you have a job still, and that’s definitely worth being thankful for… but is it still going to be a job you enjoy? Are we going to end up where we were just a matter of months ago, with you being miserable and dreading Monday morning every week? I don’t want to be there. I don’t want YOU to be there.
I hope when the dust settles, there’s no part of you wishing you /had/ been hit by the axe.
I suppose there’s no way to know that for sure. But since I like the work as well as just the people I work with, I’m feeling pretty positive in that regard.
Worst case, though… if I start to feel that way, I can begin looking elsewhere at a more level-headed and even pace rather than being forced to do so hastily. But I don’t think that will be necessary.
[…] 15, 2009 by dmsj The economic troubles facing our nation struck a little too close to home today. We’d known today was the day and were therefore prepared for the worst. I sat by my […]