Corporate Ways

Yesterday, one of my friends that I met at work got fired. She and I talked a lot about her department over the past months and I guess we saw it coming, but what bothers me is just seeing how companies do their dirty work. They had really put her in a situation where she could not win. She worked in the call center for our company, which meant being on phones all day long with our outside customers (my area does the same but with our inside customers). Coming from such an environment where I worked before, I know how the 'slave ship' works. What surprised me when I started working here was that the call center had little turn around and the employees seemed happy. I believe this stemmed from the managers of that area that seemed to genuinely care about their employees and made a rough job something to be respected and even enjoy with lots of team building and what not. Then they brought in a new manager for the area and not long after they lost two or three great managers and the turn around began in earnest. Unfortunately, the company doesn't step back and go 'hmmm...I wonder what happened?' they just let it run. Part of this could be that this manager is sleeping with a manager in HR. Anyways, another thing that happens in call centers and companies in general is that when the economy is good and other jobs are available out there, they tend to be more lax with the rules, but when the economy turns sour the screws are applied in order to weed out people and save money. Unfortunately the call center takes the brunt since they are at the bottom of the food chain. This along with a sub par manager leads to a disaster. Therese had tried to work with these people, but she was also very vocal about problems she saw in their methods and they did not want to hear this even if it was true. In the end they fired her. What's weird is I heard from someone else that it happened around lunch time, but we didn't get the email from HR about it until 5pm. This email tells us to delete their domain account and turn off email immediately and usually comes as soon as they are walked out of the building. We got another one at the same time, and last week two were let go in the same day. I have a feeling this is going to be a regular occurance now but I could be wrong. Like the ark, they are led out two by two. The company calls it a RIF (Reduction in Force). I wish Carlin could give his response on that bullshit. It's a firing, but lets call it something that sounds like nothing so no one has to feel guilty. We had a firing of 12 people in one day late last year and it included someone from HR who usually was the one walking people out so that was sweet. This just smells. Our area had our one on ones with our manager this week and he told us something that sounds a little cryptic. They want to actually get project managers to take over our projects so that we can focus on stuff that we actually are supposed to be doing. That sounds great but it also sounds like they won't need all of us to do that. We'll see what happens. There's a part of me still leftover from the battle scarred landscape of last year that thinks if I get let go I'll just store my stuff somewhere (dad's?) and hit the road or something.