February 10, 2000
Scrambling Backwards
Recently my company made some changes. My department of 4 was reduced to 2, and the work
changed a lot. It was totally unexpected, at least to me.
And even though I’m one of the ones whose job still exists, it’s
brought up a lot of difficult feelings. I
hadn’t realized how many, until they started coming out in other areas of my life.
It’s weird how that happens. If I’m feeling something – even if I
don’t know I’m feeling it – and I’m not expressing it, it tends
to come out somewhere else. Like a leaky
teacup. If you patch the place you expect the
tea to get out, it might still find some other crack to come through. One way or another, it’s going to escape. Either through one of these cracks, or by just
overflowing when it gets too full.
There are a bunch of different feelings in
that teacup right now. And every time I patch
one spot, it feels like something else is about to open up. I don’t like feeling this way. I haven’t felt this little control over my
life for quite awhile.
I’ve been feeling a lot of anger about
the situation at work. The company brought in
consultants to identify ways to save money. So
these consultants went to work to figure out where the company was carrying unnecessary
baggage. After months of analyzing all the
work processes in the company, they recommended changes that would amount to $15 million
annually. And although my department was
merely a drop in the bucket when you look at the big picture, one of the changes that was
recommended was that my department be cut back, and that half our projects be
discontinued. Our projects were things like
editing documents for other departments, writing speeches, teaching business writing
classes, and producing newsletters. It seems
the consultants figured that about half of what we were doing was unnecessary work. We kept the business writing classes and most of
the newsletters (never the most interesting part of our work), but lost the editing and
most of our other kinds of projects. This is
very frustrating, because we never met with these people who made the decisions, and we
had very little opportunity to present exactly what our department did. Besides that, I feel like our supervisor
didn’t fight for our group the way she should have.
Losing all those projects showed us that
the work we were doing before was not valued, even though it increased the quality of the
business. What we added was a qualitative
improvement, not a quantitative one. And the
proof is this: in the few weeks since this happened, we have already seen the drop in the
quality of company documents – yesterday a newsletter that we used to edit came out,
full of bad mistakes and bad writing. It’s
very frustrating to see an existing need that we’re not allowed to fill anymore.
But this isn’t the only thing I’m
mad about. The worst thing is, they
eliminated two of the positions in our department: our supervisor’s and one other. Our supervisor seems to have had an inkling of
what was about to happen – she found another job within the company before all these
changes were announced. Unfortunately, she
didn’t tell any of us about her suspicions. So
we were very surprised when we found out in January that her position and one other
person’s position were being phased out. In
other words, not only would there be no supervisor for our group, but one of us was also
being let go. This bothers me for so many
reasons. First of all, the job that was
eliminated is the same as my job – staff writer.
Second, they had to choose between me and the other staff writer, and that makes me
really uncomfortable. I experienced something
like survivor’s guilt over that. Third,
other people knew what was happening before we did, and nobody told any of us. That made me feel powerless and betrayed.
Some people find it difficult to understand
why this is so hard. It’s not even that
the job was eliminated in a particularly brutal way.
At some companies, they tell you your job is being eliminated and then they
escort you to clean out your desk and leave. My
co-worker has until the end of May to find another job, either within the company or
outside. If he hasn’t found something by
then, he gets 6 weeks of severance pay. And
on top of all that he’s a very skilled person, a good worker, an excellent writer and
editor. This is someone who is likely to have
a lot of other opportunities if he looks around. But
the whole thing still just smells bad. It’s
really hard to put a nice face on “Sorry, we just don’t need you anymore.” And the other thing is, we will miss this person
terribly when he goes. He is the most
social, funny, and friendly one of us, and it’s going to be quiet and lonesome
without him.
Another thing that has happened now is that
we no longer have a supervisor. We
aren’t really considered a department anymore, so we sort of got rolled into a
different department that does things we don’t do.
And so now we are getting a lot of attention from our boss’s boss. She understands nothing about editing or writing,
and really seems to have no idea what it is that we do.
She’s also taken us off some important projects because she obviously
thinks we’re incapable of doing them. Never
mind the fact that our department was successfully managing these projects before. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of
confidence in our work, despite the fact that 2 of us still have our jobs.
So during the last 5 weeks, since this all
started, I’ve felt angry, betrayed, sad, unappreciated, and powerless, among other things. It hasn’t been the greatest time. And as these feelings have taken hold,
they’ve also taken a toll on other parts of my life.
In trying to hold in the feelings I’ve felt about my job, I’ve found
myself becoming insecure about a lot of other things.
Relationships, my future, my judgment – I’m just questioning all these
things right now. It’s been hard to hang
onto the progress I’ve made in the last 14 months or so. I’ve felt at times like I’m scrambling
backwards. In dealing with other people
I’ve been oversensitive, insecure, and unable to express my needs. I’ve been dependent in ways that I’m
usually not.
And because it scares me to feel these
things, even just a little bit, I haven’t been honest with myself about my feelings. I just hate it when I do that. I don’t feel like I’m falling back into
the hole, but I can’t help but recognize these feelings as a throwback to past times. I feel like I’m letting people down. Hurting them and making them worry. Scaring them.
I don’t want people to be scared for me, I want them to be confident I
can deal with this and come out okay on the other side.
To trust that I will maintain the progress I’ve made. I feel like I can, most of the time.
And I will.
I have a new level of responsibility at work, since there aren’t as
many of us working on the projects anymore. I
think I’m dealing well with that. I have
started doing things I’ve always been reluctant to do, like interview people for
newsletter articles and deal with people higher up the ladder than I’m used to. And even though it’s stressful to do some of
these new things, I haven’t even been very nervous.
By doing those things I think I’m even learning something, because that
part has translated into my personal life, too. I’ve
started being more active about meeting people. This
week things have been getting a little better. I’m
glad.
In the long term, I know I’m going to
be okay. Either I’ll like this job
again, or I’ll find another job that I like. I
won’t do work that I don’t enjoy. That
is a promise I’ve made myself, and one I intend to keep. I can’t be any more serious than that. In the meantime, I’m learning a lot, and
feeling terribly thankful for the people who are helping me get through this. |
