Still Employed

Exhibit 1: I receive an email from my former manager informing me of the impending closure of the lab at which I spent the past five+ years of my life working and left in July 2008 for a job with better pay, more responsibility and a fraction of the aggravation.

Exhibit 2: I message one of the former co-workers, who tells me that yes, all of them will be out of a job as of January 30. Former employer (owner) flies in on Sunday and sets up meeting with manager. Informs manager that he is shutting the lab down and that he will be making the announcement on Monday morning.

Employees gather in conference room on Monday morning, owner makes announcement. Employees leave lab in shock, go for coffee. Return to lab less than thirty minutes later, discover owner is gone. As in packed up and headed back to west coast office.

A happy hour is announced. Former employees are invited to join the newly unemployed at a South Side bar for conversation and commiseration.

All but one former employee appears for the happy hour. We are entertained with stories of the horror that was the final two weeks of the lab.

How the owner went AWOL after the announcement, refusing to return any emails, messages or phone calls until late into the second week, leaving the lab manager (who is also out of a job) to deal with the fallout.

It was the manager who determined that the laid off employees would not qualify for COBRA insurance*, figured out how to file for unemployment**, and ran resume improvement sessions. It was the manager who determined which equipment would be sent back to the west coast and which could be sold. It was the manager who had to endure, after two weeks of being completely ignored, a dressing down by the owner about not moving “fast enough” to get the equipment shipped and sold off.

They tell us about the sudden influx of work that forced most of the employees to test while packing up and shipping the most valuable equipment to back to the west coast and writing ads to sell the remaining equipment on craigslist. That, as late as Thursday, project managers on the west coast were requesting testers for projects.

There were also the passive aggressive attempts at revenge. The equipment put on craigslist was deliberately overpriced, to make it more difficult to sell, thus leaving the owner to deal with the removal any remaining pieces once the lease on the office space ran out. Instructions by the owner to remove sold pieces from the lab (which included a ping pong table and a full size refrigerator) were ignored. Because the demand for testers continued until the very last day, the lab manager was able to extend his employment for an additional two weeks, since he could not send any of the remaining equipment back.

As the account of common atrocities piled up, I was increasingly thankful that I left last July. I am acutely aware that the position I have might not last, that I may not get my contracted raises, that J might lose his job. But right now, I am very happy that I took a deep breath, sacrificed some of my time off and plunged into something new.

*Companies with less than 20 employees are not required to offer COBRA. What makes this detail interesting is the company had less that 20 employees when I left and I was offered COBRA. So not only did my former coworkers lose their job, my former employer elected to do the shitty thing and not offer them an opportunity to maintain their insurance coverage.

**I can't help but wonder if they will be screwed out of unemployment for the same reason they were screwed out of COBRA.