I'm not sure how many of you I told about this, nor can I remember if I posted about it on the message board - so here goes.
March 28th, Thursday
8:30am
It's a fairly normal Thursday morning at work - except for one thing: no direct deposit of my paycheck. My direct deposit has been late before, so I didn't think too much of it. However, the buzz of more layoffs at our headquarters in Arizona made me wonder slighty.
7:30pm
While I'm out running errands, I go ahead and pick up my mail from my P.O.Box. I receive a letter from my company's benefits administration center. It describes my option to continue my medical insurance according to the new COBRA laws. Continue my insurance? Um, ok...that would mean I'm no longer employed, right? Well, the letter is dated March 22nd which means if something did happen to my status as an employee, then no one told me.
March 29th, Friday
7:00pm
I get into work early so I can call our payroll and benfits administration center (one is based in the eastern time zone, hence the early hour). By this point, I've also checked my online 401(k) and there was no contribution to my account (which has always posted just after midnight on Friday morning). Payroll shows that there was a payment made to me, but that they will open a case number and get back to me within 72 working hours.
While on the horn, I also called up our HR representative in Arizona. Of course, I was tranferred to the voicemail, so I left a short message asking if I had been laid off without being told. (Yes, after half of my office was laid off in two waves over the past six months, I've given up beating around the bush about these things).
8:15am
One of my teammates walks in and I show him the letter. Guess what? He got one too. Both of us are now severely demotivated to actually working because well, for all we know, we've been out of work for the past week. The boss also comes in and we confront him about the situation, however, he is clueless.
9:30am
Get a call back from our HR rep - she confirms that I have NOT been laid off, and that there have been several of these letters sent out even to some who work at her location. She refers to these accidents as "Terms in Error" (otherwise known as we screwed up and fired you accidentally). The way she worded it sounded very suspicious, as if the action was correct, but the timing was off. So, we are ok for now. . .
4:01pm
Throughout the day, my teammate and I have been discussing the events and postulating as to what was really going on. We concluded that there was a list of people for each wave of layoffs. The last wave hit last week, and we assumed that we were on the next list and accidentally got included in this one.
Well, our boss had been talking to the folks in Arizona and finally got down to the truth or at least the version they had revealed to him. My teammate and I made our way to his office to hear the perilous tale of HR mishaps. He told us that, yes, someone in HR screwed up big time and they pressed the red button on those that they shouldn't have. Basically, we were on "the list" for June and somehow that subset of employees had the same administrative actions applied to them as those who were actually laid off. Someone got a little trigger happy with the names on that Excel spreadsheet I think. And a very merry lay off to them as well. -:)
The Present
So, yeah, it looks like June is going to be it. It doesn't feel bad, actually, it feels good. The only thing keeping me going at that place was a handful of the people remaining that I've enjoying spending lunch with (and the downturn in the job market). The work has been interesting to an extent, but this is just the kick in the tail I needed to get things in order for another career move.
I've got my CISSP now, by the way. I passed the exam, so I'm now a certified computer security professional. I've been thinking about going up to D.C. or down to Florida...who knows? I've also been considering doing some consulting work (I've found quite a few companies that need custom software, but they don't want to hire a permanent employee) - I'd rather decide my destiny than have a corporation do it for me.
