Dead Man Working

 

How to tell when you have reached the end of the road

JOBLESSNESS IN THE US has just hit a 25-year high, according to the newspapers. (Victims include this columnist’s brother.)

ARRGH. This is bad news for all of us.

The rest of the world’s population is worried. This is because we admire the US as “the land of the free”. Oh, okay, let’s be brutally honest, we admire the US as “the mother lode of TOTALLY undiscriminating customers”.

The result is that OUR jobs will be lost too.

Dead wood goes first. A woman I know picked up a newspaper and chuckled over a job ad. “Look at this,” she laughed. “The department must be expanding. They’re looking for someone with the same skills as me.”

When no one smiled, she realized it was her job which was up for grabs.
*
A bit smarter was a guy I knew realized he wasn’t in favour when his boss kept calling him Dave despite the fact his name was Michael.

And then suddenly the bosses started getting his name correct.

AND they knew his wife’s name.

AND his kids’ names.

There could only be one reason for this. They had pulled his file to have a look at it.

When a colleague quietly advised him not to buy a new apartment, he knew the end had come.
*

 
In the previous column, we talked about sins that you may commit which are likely to get you on the “downsizing” list.

Today, we examine the condition known as Dead Man Working. You are in this state during the period (usually three to five days) between the boss issuing orders for you to be sacked, and the human resources guy completing all the paperwork.

Here are the signs.

1. Your get to work to find that your car park space has been reassigned to the office boy. And he doesn't even have a car.

2. As soon as you enter your workplace, the buzz of chatter disappears and everyone goes silently to their desks to start work. (Know the feeling?)

3. When you approach your cubicle, you find the guy below you is measuring your desk and trying out your seat.

4. Your bosses start exchanging comments with you only by written memo copied in triplicate, even when they’re just saying, “Morning.” (I’ve had bosses communicate by fax even when they are a few meters from me.)

5. The company website has been re-edited to refer to you in the past tense: “The project leader at the time was YOUR NAME HERE.”

6. Your secretary responds to your orders by continuing to read her magazine and saying, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

7. You look at the company performance chart and notice that the peak day for profit/ productivity was the day that you joined.

8. You are asked to give urgent training to your new “assistant”. Your departure is particularly close if you are given less responsibility than the intern, especially if you are the chief financial officer, and she is still in school uniform.

9. At lunchtime in the office canteen, no one will share your table, even if it means they have to eat standing up.

10. The phone sanitizer skips your cubicle, realizing that she can do it when you’re gone.

The final minutes of your life with the company have arrived when you get a call inviting you to an unexpected meeting in the conference room with your boss.

You stand up.

You look over the cubicle wall into the conference room.

You see your boss there, looking grumpy and rubbing his sweaty palms.

Bad sign: The boss is accompanied by the human resources director.

Worse sign: The company lawyer is with him.

Worst sign of all: So are the security guards.

*
Thanks so much for all your comments and jokes recently (I particularly love your airline stories, Fardel, and your office anecdotes, Angela). I;m indebted to you. My month off is coming to an end and this page will become livelier again from next week.

In the meantime, here’s a new entry for our “meet the gang” feature.

We often have interesting comments from a guy named Chamin. Who is he? His full name is Chaminda de Silva. He was born in Sri Lanka, worked in Singapore, and is currently doing post-graduate studies in Japan, being an expert in multimedia.

But he does lots of volunteer work. This includes international cooperation events, English language teaching events for Tokyo kids, and so on – the picture below shows him with some of his students.

“I travel, take photos, read books and do volunteer work when I have free time--okay, I read this blog irrespective of whether I have free time,” he said.

(Illustration at the top: Movie poster for Fired! by Annabelle Gurwitch)

Comments

[TS]

Many moons ago when I was still in school I had a job helping out in an office.
At the end of the month, when all the bills had to go out, eight or nine kids would come in for a few days "enveloping" the bills and running the lot through the postage machine.
We were overseen by a pensioner doing the same as us, topping up his allowance but at the other end of life.

Eventually we could see the end, when the company bought a very sophisticated mail processing machine that could do the lot in just half a day supervised by only one person.
We all knew that person would be the pensioner and he was absolutely frightened out of his wits with the prospect of being in charge of machinery that would ignore his yelling when jamming. Part of his fright might be linked to that he had lost a couple of fingers in an incident involving a copy machine and he didn't cherish the thought of losing more digits.

That's the closest I have ever come to being fired, nothing dramatic, all that happened was that the phone calls at the end of the month stopped.

PS, Don't feel bad for the old guy I made up the "losing his fingers" part, I thought my story needed a bit of spice.

[Nury]

You are so cheeky, TS, your last line made my laugh -- hah!

I've been sacked lots of times, not as bad as it seems from a distance.

Or maybe I am just an incredibly insensitive person

[Angela]

Both, Nury.

It's not as bad as it seems from a distance and you are also incredibly insensitive person.

I feel the same. A job is just a job. It is part of my life but not the whole of my life and so it has to be managed as such.

[Chamin]

Hi Nury, thanks a lot for the introduction.

When I was fired, I was fired with the entire division and I had already been working on moving to the next job. I think that helped to make me feel less bad.

Now I am trying hard to get a teaching position, so that I don't end up in the same boat as "Have PhD" guy in the picture :-p.

[fardel]

Airlines need money AND I am not going to give them any through a court order.

Loosing a job is not that bad:It is like loosing a girlfriend/ spouse:
Is is not that bad as it seems from a distance; oops especially if you put a distance ( a good one , of course!)

Thanks Nury for posting another student's picture in the gang gallery, on an old man's birthday;

Hey Chamin ; welcome to the gallery
:On the bottom picture , I cannot make out who is the student who is the teacher.
Can you put a cross above your head ?
Hi Nury
I remember coming back to work from vacation in Mexico.
"Good morning boss, I am back from a beautiful country, where I would not mind living -

Good, and thanks for the tip, you will make it easy for us:
What about you go live there, because , here , you are no longer welcome.
We can no longer get any public funds until you go.
And the money is important to us"

The window which opened for me on this day was not a window: it was a huge sliding door with view on the Caribbean sea,and a place in the Caribbean sky.

I just had to sail across an ocean to get it

By the way, talking about ocean crossing ; i have been delayed by hurricane Bill;
I might not arrive on your shores until next year

[sej]

Fardel: I heard a story recently of someone who was fired by email whilst they were away overseas on holiday. Needless to say, they haven't gone home, and to all intents and purposes, still on holiday be it, luckily for them, now a paid one.

[Chamin]

Hi Fardel,

Happy birthday! (unless I made a wrong guess). But you are definitely not old, by Japanese standards.

you are right, the dark one in the middle doesn't look like any kind of a teacher :o). But it's much more fun that way, when we all learn from each other.

[Vnice A]

That's how i read it too Chamin. Happy 68th Birthday fardel.

Speaking of losing spouse, anyone ever heard anyone say they've been fired from a marriage? When your wife finds another, you've been made redundant.

[fardel]

Hey Chamin
Thank you for your happy birthday note.
It was just a joke
Thank you any way

[Sham]

I would never have guessed that so many of you have experienced some form of being fired.
To tell the truth, i am an internal auditor, and my job scope includes conducting reviews when management wants to get rid of someone. We look at the case, and prepare a report which lists reasons why they can go ahead with the firing. Sad. But where i come from, we dont really fire people, we just ask them to resign. Avoids unnecessary industrial court cases.
As my job is so negative, i need this column to keep my mood positive. So please, no more talk of getting fired etc.

[Anon]

Wow, Chamin, what a hunk!

[farah]

why is it when a company leaves you you're fired and when you leave the company it's called resignation? shouldnt it be that you're firing the company as well?

[Angela]

To fire the company, you have to set the building on fire (you have to have an escape plan ofcourse). And then you will begin a new career as an arsonist.

[farah]

not bad!! see that's what i meant about closing doors and opening windows.

[Karuna]

hello Chamin..lovely children. Must be fun work.

Are typical Japanese children very polite ?
My son has a japanese friend. This boy bows when he meets me.

Realy different to my son. The most I get from my son is a friendly grunt when he meets me.

[godiva]

farah, love the idea. It would be nice writing a letter addressed to your boss and saying, "henceforth, i fire you. I acknowledge that you are grateful for everything i did here."

[Chamin]

Hi Karuna,

Japanese children are very polite, compared to kids I met in other countries.

They tend to misbehave a little (as in shout a bit in class), until they finish primary school. The ones in the photo are from primary 5th grade. Once in secondary school, they start taking responsibilities for their groups, I think that makes them so polite.

[Kancy]

Hi Chamin, I've always wanted to go to Japan! A very beautiful and organized place, and I like Murakami a lot!! Though I should have nationalistic feelings for Japan since my hometown is Nanjing, my greatgreatgreat grandmon was probably a victum of the massacre.

Nury, what a hilarious blog you have!Is Hongkong any fun? I think Cantonese-speaking men sound rich and cantonese-speaking girls sound sexy.

[stef]

Cute kids!

I myself am a Japanese-language teacher in my country. Needless to say, some of my students have been downright rude. :)

[mandy]

Chamin: hi there! im looking for some volunteer opportunity for some time now... preferably somewhere remote and involving community work (not teaching English)...do u know some good sites i could check out?

Thanks!