Moving On

So. I find myself on the verge of embarking on a new job…again.

About a month ago my boss called a staff meeting. We’ve never had a staff meeting before. I just knew it couldn’t be good. He told us he had decided to retire.
I couldn’t say I was shocked. Anyone could see his heart wasn’t in it anymore. But I guess I had been hoping he would hang on for a couple of more years until I was in a position to make him an offer.

When he was finished talking I congratulated him and wished him well. What else can you say really? I went back to my office and when I turned to sit at my desk, I realized my two co-workers had followed me. The door was closed and we had our own little meeting. There were tears, shock, anger. Not from me. I’ve been here before.

Several years ago I was hired by a small biotech firm as an Accounts Payable clerk. It was my first full time job since I’d had kids and I was both nervous and excited. It was a growing company and I was hoping to grow with it. In the first two years I was there, the number of staff more than doubled and I was promoted to General Accountant and then to Assistant to the Controller. I loved my job. Not only was the work interesting, but I also felt really good about what we did as a company: developing hardware and software for drug discovery. The other thing I really loved about working there was that we recruited literally from all over the world. I took on the job of unofficial welcome wagon, helping new people find their way around the city. I met so many interesting people and made some life long friends.

We grew too fast. The company reached a point where we couldn’t keep up with marketing and distribution and so the owner made the decision to sell 49% of the company to a UK based corporation. Initially nothing much changed except that we now had a CEO as well the President, and hired a few more people. I still loved my job.

The UK Corp. had an option to purchase the other 51% of the shares after five years, which they did. The President and original owner of the company was gone and we suddenly felt a lot more of a corporate presence. They cut about ¼ of the staff – mostly in sales and marketing so we all worked more hours to pick up the slack.

I had thought that they didn’t come much bigger than the UK Corp. I was wrong. One morning I came in and found the CEO had called a staff meeting (yes, I know). The announcement was that our little company had been bought lock, stock and barrel by one of the biggest, soulless corporate giants I could ever have imagined. The next announcement was that “nothing would change”. Followed by they were moving the company to New Jersey.

Primarily they were after our R&D team. They offered them and a number of others jobs in NJ, but it was really the R&D guys that they wanted. And I am happy to tell you that not a single one of them took the offer. That was the bright side of the whole thing for me! Whoever was not going to NJ was offered a package, including my boss, Lori and me. Her and I and three others were offered a six-month extension to close the place down – pack up, ship out, sell off and close the books. The sane thing to do would have been to leave then and there, but I knew Lori was too responsible to do that and I couldn’t leave her to do it all herself. So I stayed. By the middle of December there were five of us left in the building and it was like a tomb. Morale couldn’t have gotten any lower.

We were busy, but there was no life left in the place. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.
I brought in cookies and soft drinks and set them out on what used to be the receptionists desk. Then I waded through boxes in the warehouse until I found the ones I was looking for and dragged them out to the reception area too. I started putting up the Christmas tree that we’d always had in the front entrance. One by one my co-workers walked by and stopped to help me. We decorated the tree, plugged in the lights and sat around eating cookies! It was almost like old times.

Christmas came and went and the tree was still there. Every morning I plugged in the lights. Valentines’ Day was upon us so I routed around in the supply cupboard and found some pink paper. I cut out pink hearts and stuck them all over the tree on top of the Christmas decorations and lights.

By March a lot of the equipment had been shipped to New Jersey and we were now deciding what could be auctioned off. March also brought St. Patrick’s Day. Yup.
Green paper and cut outs vaguely resembling Shamrocks were stuck up on the tree over the pink hearts and the rest. Easter came early that year and so I cut out yellow eggs and decorated them with highlighters before plastering them all over the tree! It was one weird looking “Christmas” tree let me tell you.

My six months was almost up and I’d found another job and would be leaving a week early. Everything was pretty much done.

On my last day there Lori asked me what I was going to do with the tree? I thought about it for a minute and then said I had an idea. For Christmas the previous year Lori’s husband had given her, as a joke, a large red rubber stamp that spelled out F**K It.
I cut out dozens of white squares from my recycling bin and stamped them all. You guessed it. I stuck them all over the tree. I wasn’t sure what Lori would say, but she laughed, and then the five of us gathered around the tree for one last “staff” photo.
It seemed fitting somehow.

This time around, there is no tree. The last day will see a pizza lunch. Not so much a bang as a whimper. But, I’ve found another job and I will move on, as will we all.
One thing I’ve learned is that change happens whether you want it to or not and the ones who survive are the ones who change with it. Makes me think of the book, “Who Moved my Cheese” by Dr. Spencer Johnson. Better to be the mouse that bravely goes off in search of ‘new’ cheese than the one that just sits and waits for it to find him, and slowly starves to death.