Waiting for my single ringer
Today is one of my lucky days. It marks the fifth or sixth time I’ve successfully avoided layoffs at my company in the near two years I’ve been there.

Usually by the time these things happen, they’re little of a secret. Buzz starts early and speculation runs rampant, but what no one ever knows is the magnitude of the cutbacks. In today’s case, it was more than 10 percent of an already Auchwitz-esqe running workforce.

The nature of layoffs, although chaotic at first glimpse, is actually quite calculated. They usually take place on Tuesday, because someone, somewhere, in some Human Resources Department has determined that mid-week layoffs have much less of a psychological affect on the misfortunate. They begin early, around nine or 10 a.m., so as to have them done by noon and forgotten about by the time the rest of the staff returns from lunch, and in our case, the signal of your demise is the single ringer. The telephone system at work rings once for inside calls, twice for those outside the building.

For three hours today, I sat and waited for my single ringer and watched my former co-workers heft boxes out the door, some with tears streaming down their cheeks, others with defiant attitudes.

Surprisingly, the best part of my day was the unusually pleasant cashier at our local Wal-Mart. I’m sure this comes at the dismay of all my Target-loyal friends.

She was busy chatting up a storm about the large tanker truck that flipped on 494 this morning, closing the highway in both directions and starting a chain reaction of gridlock around the entire metro. She was happy that I didn’t have to endure the hours of traffic that other suburban commuters had to, as it was 6 p.m. and the highway was still closed. She concluded with a statement that made me think:

“Consider yourself lucky,” she said. I responded, “Yes, Doris, I suppose I am.”

posted by paula 6:48 PM