Hammer Fall II

Sorry for the delay - I had a field trip yesterday and a busy day today (which would seem to be a oxymoron for the unemployed), so I had to step away from the keyboard. The result was I ended up with about four blog posts, of which I can only do one tonight.

So I'll do the saddest one.

I got notification today that the rest of my most recent former employer's staff is being laid off - tomorrow. Things continued to go less than desirably, so the decision was made - two days before the company was set to move - that this was what was going to occur.

I told The Ravishing Mrs. TB that this made me sad - sadder than when I got laid off. Why the difference? I think it's because the people that remained has an additional two weeks to have to work on things there, with the packing for moving, the sense of lost from colleagues no longer present, and the weighing concern that even with all their effort, it wasn't gone to make a difference.

It's shocking - with two weeks, the company went from 25 full time employees to 6 and probably to 0 within another six weeks.

The surprising thing to me, however, is the conversations I've had with a couple of them. Not really sorrow, except for the loss of great coworkers. The sense of relief was mentioned, that the waiting was finally over, and they could move on with their lives knowing what was going to happen. I say surprising because that is not the reaction I would have suspected, which should surprise me more, as that was not my reaction when it happened to me. Maybe I now have the view of an outsider, looking at it from the perspective not as one having to work on it but as someone who is having to look for a job in an incredibly shrunk market, while they see this as an end to uncertainty in their lives.

Sad to me none the less - both for loss of community (and it was a vibrant one) as well as for the failure of an idea. And, for the fact that more friends are entering a market which seems to be growing tighter and tighter.