Ecstatic Gaucho

At 12 o’clock on the dot (high noon, in fact), last Thursday, we received an email from the MD of our office. It ominously said “As a result of this significant change in the business environment it is now essential that we review how we are organized to ensure we have the most effective organizational structure as we move forward.” He also called a meeting at 11 on Monday morning.

The words ‘review’ and ‘organisational structure’ (even if it was spelled with a z) so close together gave me a horrible nightmare that night in which I was given the sack and went mad, and smashed up my kitchen with the kitchen chair, whilst shouting out “How am I going to pay my mortgage now?”. Gaucho Towers is obviously now a significant source of anxiety.

Somehow, over the weekend, I managed to forget about the whole horrible business – burying my head in the sand more than anything. Monday morning, however, was very dismal. The office had a very eerie atmosphere, partially due to our clanking and roaring AC having gone on the blink. Some wags decided to cheer the place up with a special ’sacking mix’ on the speakers, that started with ‘The Final Countdown’ by the Scorpions, the rest of the mix is reproduced above. I set my IM status to ‘Today’s the day’.

Everyone was nervous. I only met one person who seemed relatively upbeat, and who told me that “there is a lot of deadwood here, you’ve just got to think whether your job is indispensible or not”. No one is indispensible, I thought, not in a properly functioning business. Least of all me.

11 o’clock came, and we were called into the kitchin where even the MD said that his hands were shaking when he made his announcement, although I wouldn’t have noticed had he not drawn our attention to it. The upshot was that 38 of our 150 should go, and we would be informed later in the day if we were to be included.

At about 12.30 I got my call to come downstairs, and was luckily reprieved. The rest of the day was crappy, with heads hung low and an even more subdued atmosphere in the office. Some teams knew that a certain number of people would be going, but not who they would be until the end of the month. After a quick visit to the pub, I went home, there was not much to keep me hanging around. Eugh!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 at 9:57 am and is filed under Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.