Hey, Hey, What, Get Laid Off

The announcement of my company's acquisition by one of our competitors came weeks ago, but the closing of the deal is upon us, and the tension in the office is palpable. If you've ever gone through an acquisition, a bankruptcy or a down-sizing, then you know the feeling. It starts with rumors and gossip. "Psst, hey, did you hear we are getting bought?", "Psst, hey, did you hear they are making layoffs?", "Psst, hey, did you hear that Britney Spear's vagina got its own record deal?".

Then you get the official e-mail, "All-hands meeting, Thursday at 2:00 pm", and the office erupts into pandemonium, Jamie in Accounts Receivable starts doing shots of Jack Daniels, Steve in Sales, puts a gun to his head, Gary in Finance, starts screaming like Nancy Kerrigan, "Why! Why! Why!", and that creepy IT guy is balled up in the corner holding a Dell laptop and whispering "My Preciousssssssss". Me, I just shrug my shoulders and get back to work.

I've been laid off from every job I've had since graduating college. A grand total of six times so far, with number seven looming on the horizon. It all started when the record store I was managing in Nashville closed. For all the young kids, a record store is where old people used to have to actually pay real money for music. That's right, if we wanted to hear the latest chart topping tunes, we had to leave our house, go to the mall and actually buy an entire album. We couldn't buy just one song. If I wanted to enjoy "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mixalot, I had to spend $17.99 for 12 other songs that sucked ass. I know, it was a sick, sick world, but I like big butts and I can not lie.

After the record store closed, I got a really sexy job as a Regional Inventory Control Coodinator. I purchased and transferred copiers around the country. I'd brag to all my friends "Dude, I totally transferred 20 Canon C5068's from Atlanta to Memphis this morning. They said it couldn't be done, but I am the Burt Reynolds of the copier world!". Well, this gig came to an end, and I moved over to Accounts Payable. Can I get a woot woot for dot matrix printers? I'd print huge reports and then reconcile them, I was living the dream. I used to reconcile accounting reports recreationally on the weekends, and now I was actually getting paid to do it. I'm getting a semi right now just thinking about it.

Well, that gig went the way of the dinosaurs, so I packed up my shit and moved to Lakewood, Colorado. Buh-bye southern twang and hello purple mountains majesty. The internet was just starting to take over the world, so I worked with a recruiter to get a job in technology. I became a Help Desk hero, with stars in my eyes. Our company delivered online education, so we offered courses on how to use programs like Microsoft Office, Photoshop and download porn.

Our clientele was mostly older people who were using the computer for the first time, so my typical help desk calls were always great fun. Once it took me 45 minutes to help an elderly woman type a URL into her AOL browser. Getting ass raped in prison was less painful than this call. I know you're thinking how would I know how painful an ass rape is. I was in the klink for taking tags off mattresses back in '84 and this MS 13 latino bitch starts talking smack about my Duran Duran tattoo, so I put a cigarrette out in his eye and yelled in his face "Wild boys always shine". Not my smartest move, because his cohorts caught me in the shower later that night and expanded the ol' Hershey Highway to 6 lanes. My bad, lesson learned.

That start-up ran out of money and they were eventually purchased by a larger company, so I moved over to another start-up, which did online conferencing. I could write a book with the madness that went on at this company. It was the height of the dot com boom, when the frat house lifestyle took over the corporate world. Toga! Toga! Toga! We had a foosball table, free drinks and happy hours in the office every Friday. We held funerals for fish, played office golf and plotted complex pranks. Then came the bust. Investment money dried up and the layoffs ensued. It was so bad, they even started laying off the foosball players. Believe me, it was a sad day when I had to take my goalie off his pole and show him the door.

Then, I went back to the online learning company for a couple of months before they went belly up. Like a scene from "Groundhog's Day" I was laid off by the same guy, at the same company, 3 years earlier. Before I was let go, the office was down to 2 people, an IT guy and me. I actually went to work in a huge office with one other person. It was like a post-apocalyptic movie where 2 people are holed up in an old abandoned building. He stacked and inventoried equipment, while I answered a handful of calls each day. Talk about isolated, it was like that time I spent in a Turkish prison with a naked guy watching gladiator movies.

Which brings me to my current position, and my longest tenure at any one company. Next week we have the dreaded "all hands" call. We'll see how it all plays out, but as long as the creepy IT guy doesn't trade his 'Preciousssssssss' for a trench coat and a shotgun, I think we'll all be ok wherever we end up.