I am beginning this diary in medias res. I am going to lose my job
at the end of the month (of this I'm reasonably sure), and I want to
document everything because I'm the kind of dork who documents everything.
Here are the facts, with names changed to protect the innocent (including
me).
I am (for the time being) a lower-eschelon employee at a regional
satellite office of The Company. The Company itself is headed by
Baby-Faced CEO, who has been in power for only a few months and despises
our facility because of a Byzantine reorganization. We used to work for
That Other Company, but then That Company bought That Other Company and
laid all of That Other Company's employees off but our department. Now
Baby-Faced is in charge, and we're on the way out at last. He is very
young for his job--mid-thirties if a day--and is a sniveling, splenetic
homunculus. He just dislikes us, and despite swearing to the contrary at a
company-wide meeting, it looks like he's going to dump us for sure.
Jay* tells me this today, and he's absolutely unglued. Snuffling and
hysterical. I'm strangely relieved, but it's more a priority to comfort
him. Jay is the Company Man personified: he works his hinder off, he
maintains immaculate schedules, and he composes concise, results-
oriented e-mail. He loves this job. He loves the Industry and the
Customers. Most of all, he likes Us.
Of Us, there is me, there is Greg*, and there is Michelle*, our
newest, fresh-out-of-college hire. There's also Andy*, our crazy
Libertarian site manager, and The Programmers, who are, obviously,
programmers. They were hired as a group after our reorganization and
sort of move through life as a unit.
We don't know how long it will take for them to drop us--Greg, the skeptic,
estimates three years, given our current glacial speed of getting things
done--but Jay says it's a certainty. I think Andy is his source, but he
won't cop to it. Andy is mysterious and fleet-footed.
This news means bad things for my period, which has been askew ever
since I agreed to take on the Career-Making Project. I have a weekend job,
and I am afraid I'll never have any free time to spend on myself and on my
intrepid best friend/fiancee, Brett*. I stopped menstruating altogether
for two months. The doctor subjected me to a battery of tests. Her
diagnosis: Stress.
