I feel like I should write something right now. There is almost so much going on (and most of it is shitty) that I don’t know where to start. 

Sadly, a lot of it is work related. My employer is laying people off like mad right now and has been for three months now with no defined end in sight. No one really knows who will be next, when will they stop, what the end game is. Everyone is on edge and morale is in the toilet… swirling, swirling, swirling away. 

The reality is that the majority of companies that have to layoff a significant portion of their employees don’t do it this way. If they have to layoff 200 people, they do it all at once. One day. It’s like tearing off a band-aid; quick pain but then it’s ok after that. The people that are left can just get on with their lives and jobs. 

In Alberta, Canada however, if you lay off 50 people or more in a month, you have to report it to the provincial government and it becomes publicly very messy. Maybe it’s like this elsewhere, I’m not sure. The law surrounding corporate layoffs isn’t my forte. 

Anyway, it’s basically been 150 people laid off so far? I haven’t been keeping a running tally, I’ll leave that to the wraiths in HR. Our office has downsized even further by opting to transfer people to other offices too work on other projects to keep from having to lay them off. And there has been some attrition from the older folks in the office saying, “fuck this shit” and deciding to retire. Also, some (not many) have found employment elsewhere and just quit. 

One might say, “Why don’t more people do that? Who needs to go through the agony of long-term protracted layoffs?” 

I’ll tell you a little story about our friend, Mr. West Texas Intermediate and how sad he is because his price on the open market is very low. The industry I work in and the entire local economy revolves around Mr. WTI and when his price is low, end user companIes lose their minds and throw the emergency brake on all spending. Have you hear the phrase, “shit rolls downhill?” Yeah, me and the company I work for? We’re downhill. Me and every other Joe Shmoe who works for a company below the end user. So there are not many jobs left to jump to and the competition is strong for the few jobs that are left.

I have no idea if I’ll have a job at the end of the day tomorrow or next week or the week after that. Frankly, I can’t even look that far into the future. I’m taking it as fact that I’m going to be laid off and that it’s just a matter of time.