Chapter 3 - A Falling Action

The last communications meeting was Thursday, August 19, 2003. We were shown the new structure of the business unit. The reorg had finally been accomplished.

Everyone's names were on the new charts!

Granted, my Operations Manager was demoted in grade to a group level manager. My group level manager was moved to program management. What was immediately infuriating to everyone concerned is that for all the drama, we were still in the same positions, still in the same job functions.

Or, so we thought.

August 26, 2003. This was the fourth year anniversary of my father's death. I remember the trips I took between Texas and North Carolina to see him as cancer ate at his cells. I saw a man I once looked to for strength and wisdom slowly wither away. I saw once hard muscles atrophy and become languid. The steady frame that taught me how to box I now lowered gingerly into a tub to bath as he once did me. I saw the strong will that kept me from experimenting with the drugs that savaged my community become weak and... frightened. I saw a gray mane fall to the pillows revealing a head made bald, not by choice. I saw death and could no nothing, NOTHING to stop its natural process.

I called him "Pop" ala Elroy Jetson from the sixties cartoon show. He was a smoker and had been so since the age of ten years old. He stopped at 65.

I called him Pop as a mantra, a breath prayer to counteract the years of tobacco and alcohol abuse. I called him Pop because I calculated his age from my birth: 37 until his demise at 74 on August 26, 1999. I just turned 37 when I received the call from my mother: "he's gone!" I was literally half his age.

I'd been in contact with emotions I'd denied for so long - tumultuous, agonizing pangs of tears that would not stop. I would try to anesthetize the pain with teaching martial arts, poetry, sex, wine - no drug that offered a temporary fix seemed appropriate. That night, 11:27 PM central time, I collapsed into the arms of my wife and my children. Pop, grandpa was gone.

So today was the anniversary of his death. I was four years removed from the event and was curious as to how I would commemorate his passing. At each visit to his grave in North Carolina, I'd become a hopeless mess! Apologizing for not being strong enough, agonizing over every sin I'd ever committed, feeling that I hadn't measured up to his expectations.

Today I was in Texas, 1,500 miles from his grave site. I was in control of my emotions; melancholy...

"Reggie, could you come with me please?"

My former manager had a somber look on his face. I knew what was transpiring.

My former Operations Manager had tried valiantly to find me another position within the company. The severance did not come as a surprise; just the timing of the day they chose:

August 26, 2003.

My former manager led me to my former operations manager to a walled office with someone from HR. The door was respectfully closed. Both men were visibly upset - almost to tears - as the HR rep (not the Catbert/Stepford wife Android woman, but a male underling) reviewed all the paperwork now assigned to me discreetly behind that closed door.

It felt like rape.

Ironically, I'd read an article in Fortune Magazine, ominously titled "Finished at Forty" http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,375941,00.html. They were surprised at how quickly my office affects fit neatly into one box.

If you study the art of war diligently (for me, over two decades), a sense of your surroundings develop. I'd moved out slowly, prepared for what seemed inevitable.

On that day, August 26, 2003, I'd just turned 41 twelve days before.

The day after my forty-first birthday, I wrote this poem. I hope you're not getting tired of these tomes!

As I stated in the previous chapter and somewhat above, I think humans have a built-in sixth sense of dreaded things on the horizon. I am sharing with you, the reader, what I was feeling at the time. Downturns in the economy can make you a little prophetic and a lot crazy! As the last line suggests, I'd received my... falling action.

Laughing Through Wormholes
Copyright 15 August 2003, Reginald L. Goodwin

I wanted one door to close and another to open.

I wanted
to plunge through its orifice having intercourse
in lands flowing with milk and honey.

I wanted
to steer my own rudder working cow utters
wearing protective suits and screens
occasionally getting stung by honeybees.

I wanted
to stop acting like an engineer
intellectually propping up numb skull
regimes by numb and dumber
"pointy-haired" managers (see: www.dilbert.com)
straight from Hades
torments and screams.

I wanted
the death-rattle games to end,
played by "Catbert - evil HR directors"
to my chagrin.

I wanted
to flee the tomb of innuendoes; rumors and gossip.

I wanted
to stop hearing the doubts
seeded in my mind by doublethink demons
using my talent for their fat wallet profit.

I wanted
good health and financial independence,
dependent on my God-given gifts and not
"Leave it to Beaver"
"Ozzie and Harriet"
to-make-THEM-comfortable-with-my-kind
riffs.

I wanted
to fill my days with the hot haze
of door-to-door graze, knocking, clocking
fulfilling my dreams.

I wanted
time to think and self-publish
the great American novel, essay, anthology, chapbook.

I wanted
time to design one B-A-D web page
to which others would link and look.

I wanted
to see my dreams and my life fulfilled,
my children and my wife have FAITH in me.

I wanted
off the long, unending road going to nowhere;

off the steep rollercoaster to obsidian oblivion...

I wanted to STOP it!

Chapter 2 - Denouement

From www.m-w.com: denouement - Function: noun
Etymology: French dénouement, literally, untying, from Middle French desnouement, from desnouer to untie, from Old French desnoer, from des- de- + noer to tie, from Latin nodare, from nodus knot -- more at NODE
1 : the final outcome of the main dramatic complication in a literary work
2 : the outcome of a complex sequence of events

I named this chapter denouement. A testament to my tenth grade English teacher, Velma Williamson, I recall her simplified version of the above definition as "a falling action"; "the story climax." You get the whole point of the tale after hanging on breathlessly page after page. Some authors, even more dramatically, describe it and the conclusion of a story as "a little death." An appropriate metaphor.

The Colonel continued with his non communications meetings, glazed eyes and all from March through August of 2003. We missed one meeting in June due to his having to go to a meeting at our corporate headquarters. He - that is, his secretary - sent an apologetic e-mail stating he was sorry we'd have to miss the June meeting. Hallelujah.

By July, we all got a bulk e-mail from corporate communications. There would be a reorganization of the business units and an involuntary severance before the end of the third quarter. Since July is the beginning of most companies third quarters, you can't plan vacations to conveniently fall on the fated day. Our street contacts were mum. Now, the secrecy of the corporate animus rivaled that of the White House or the Central Intelligence Agency. The attitude from most workers was heavy with despair. That became the central theme of conversations around lunch, either on or off campus. Actually, off campus lunches, though more expensive became more frequent to say things outside of the company that were not quite "PC."

"How are they making this decision?"

"My last review... I mean, I think I scored OK and all."

"You know what p----s me off? I notice they never lay themselves off, and many times it was their dumb decisions that caused the problems!"

"On top of that, they get bonuses. Do you know how long it's been since I've seen a bonus? Centuries. And I haven't lived THAT long!"

They. Them.

I watched a friend become one. He'd started out as a decent engineer. Then the dreaded thing happened: he was promoted to Section Manager.

After a succession of promotions and accolades, he became an Operations Manager of one of our factories. During process yield meetings, I'd watch him grill engineer after engineer, pestering them and hammering them until he could catch them in a technical faux pas, an "aha" moment that he'd ride until the engineer felt about two inches tall leaving the podium. It makes my skin crawl recalling some of his comments:

"What the HELL did you think you were doing?"

"Am I paying you for incompetence, or results?"

"Sit down. Those results are absolute bull----! Come back when you have something of merit to report. Come to my office after this meeting!"

"You were abusing your lab time!" The hapless engineer explained he wasn't and used the time to solve a yield problem that BENEFITED the company. "Did anyone else get in the lab while you were overusing your time? Well, then I still say you abused your lab time!"

Needless to say, my former friend/monster had a lot of professional turn over.

"...reorganization of the business units and an involuntary severance before the end of the third quarter."

August.

All of my engineering projects dried up like a sunflower wilting in the Texas summer heat. I logged as much time as I could on the test floor. I attended meetings and tried to insert myself into new projects, new platforms.

I was so distraught I went to our business unit's HR manager. She was a petite woman, swarthy and lovely, obviously of Hispanic ancestry despite her married Christian name. I made an appointment to talk with her. I wanted answers and I asked her for them. "Am I on this list?" "Why didn't you give us a choice of voluntary severance?" "Don't you realize you're playing with peoples lives and incomes here?" Her face - I'd seen it before - on my cat. An armor-piercing stare of determination. I'd usually see it on my cat before... she'd kill a mouse.

"I know how you must feel. I'm afraid I can't answer that." She said it with a staccato reminiscent of a dutiful Stepford/Android wife.

Before the end, as with my father's death four years prior (the anniversary of his demise coming soon on the twenty-sixth of the month of August) humans I feel, have premonitions of the end of things. This verse chronicled my feelings at that time:

Horizon ROAD (retired on active duty)
Copyright 11 August 2003, Reginald L. Goodwin

On the road going to nowhere
there is static on every channel;
no frantic gestures from road-raged drivers spouting nonsense.

The only relent and belief
is that you are the only driver
gazing at a horizon without event or relief.

On the road going to nowhere
dark, gray cliffs line the side
of empty streets;
no accidents to avoid,
no pedestrians (to miss) or meet.

A world void of color, inhabited by no one other than you.

On the road going to nowhere
is the stark-raving terror of reflection:
remembering life's other goals and directions
requiring risk and FAITH.
Somewhere, you lost your courage and did what was SAFE.

As you sweat in SUV expectations
not reaching for Porche or Vet,

will you stay on this road out of fear and despair:
desperately clinging to the gray color-void
surety
of
the road going to nowhere?

Chapter 1 - Great Games of Cat and Mouse

In the syndicated cartoon strip, Dilbert (R) (www.dilbert.com), Dilbert's cat, ubiquitously named Catbert is the "Evil HR director." One of Catbert's favorite games was playing with employees - as a cat, the employees likened unto mice - before informing them of their severance from the unnamed corporation where Dilbert and his coworkers were employed.

The funny thing about corporations is their preoccupation with making money. I say funny because the last thing anyone in the upper echelons would think of cutting are spiffs, bonuses and "accelerators" (never understood this compensation) that management from directors to the CEO get regardless of the companies or stock's performance. This is usually the same management that made the decisions, greased the palms and caused us all to execute the company vision on these same decisions that now had us in a deficit (oops).

The Senior Vice Presidents, Vice Presidents and Directors like us received performance reviews, which I can only assume were glowing. The CEO's review was presumably from the stock holders of the corporation. His performance was rated on the performance of the company. Depending on his/her employment contract, firing him/her could be easy or costly. Easy if you happen to be part of a debacle like Enron (a no-brainer there).

Costly, in light of the recent report of Fannie Mae's former CEO Franklin Raines and their former CFO J. Timothy Howard. Raines will receive $1.4 million dollars per year for life (he's a spy 55) and the former CFO Howard will only get $432,852 per year. Howard is 56. See http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2004-12-28-fannie-usat_x.htm.

The underlings (I am one of them) would get a performance review that is supposedly a reflection of the reality of the perception of my job performance. I'm then ranked alongside persons of my same engineering grade. I'm given my score in a quarterly review. I was told everything was going fine and my score was well above midrange of the bell curve.

Around the end of the first quarter and the beginning of the second quarter of 2003, we lost our Vice President, if you want to call it loosing him. We were informed he was finding "other opportunities within the company." Loose translation: find a job before we severe you! I hope he was successful.

Our new director was a European German. For fun and not to his face, we called him "Colonel Clink" (from Hogan's Heroes, I'm dating myself). He had a forewarned reputation as a "hatchet man." I never witnessed the man with a smile on his face. He was always very serious, very grim. Hence, if your a student of history, my reference to the Great Game in the title.

Our great game of cat and mouse began with so-called Communications Meetings. I recall knowing LESS after the communications meeting than I knew before walking in. One brilliant engineer decided to break the silence with a carefully coded question for the Colonel:

"Do you think the organization is of an efficient size to me managed effectively?"

The Colonel's reply:

"Every change in an organization takes some... pain to accomplish the greater good!"

I thought: List this man for the 2003 Darwin Award for the DUMBEST question a human being could say during an economic downturn!

And the great game would continue with our "communications meetings," that as a label was an oxymoron. After one and a half hours of Power Point charts and heavy German accents, your eyes glazed over. If any important information was communicated, you usually compared notes in the cafeteria later. What you didn't get, your fellow worker probably caught.

Since were weren't getting anything from the meetings, we'd circulate our own rumors: "I heard they're going to get us in the auditorium and lay us all off from there! Our division is getting dissolved." Most of us had street contacts with former employees of the Colonel or current secretaries that couldn't keep their mouths shut around the lunch table. If you've ever played the game in elementary school of giving the first person a note and having them whisper it to the next person, then checking the accuracy of the information with the last person in the whisper line, you can understand the distortions when intentions were not communicated clearly. Any bolder questions regarding downsizing, lay offs or division dissolving was parried with the "necessary pain for the greater good" proverb analogy.

It was during this time I wrote in my analog journal (which I still keep). It's been a habit of mine since college. I composed some thoughts about the stress I was going through at the not knowing what the future held for me and my family. I share those thoughts with you now:

Code Orange
Copyright 6 March 2003, Reginald L. Goodwin

I stare
at another "Tableau Rasa"
purchased at Barnes and Noble
for $4.95 (plus tax)
taking respite once
again on a porcelain
god listening
to the accounts
of the original
Tejas inhabitants:
one of the fellow's
wife is due soon.

yet
the rest I swoon
from is not the result of a
blown-up pager:
it is the stranger
silence... that
allows you to hear
the rumors about your
performance and intercept
all stares as broken
conversations about you.

The elation
of a job well done
flits by
in nanoseconds
that flip-flop
registers on
computer chip
architecture
couldn't keep pace with.

You've just spent time:
talking to a young mother
and her two-year-old boy
(she has another) and
looks like she's too young
to have the one
slaughtering his pizza
as he smiles
at you in Schlotsky's...
gave her my wife's number
since she and her hubby are
looking for a home
in Wimberly
(wife's a real estate agent);

finding the last
anthology of the
Austin International Poetry Festival
Barnes and Noble had
of Di-Verse-City
where you FINALLY
appear on page 100
(perks of being a board member -
bought it for my mother for
Mother's Day).

Assaulted by WORDS
of Whitman, Hughes, Saul Williams, Beau Sea, Reggie Gilson
as decisions become as clouded as the
overcast skies viewed.

Enraptured by a fellow
artist - Adrienne - young
enough to be your daughter,
yet by her neo 70s dress
and quiet demeanor
stressed you to ask:
"Are you a poet?"
(Yes! And an artist, too.
Her surreal exhibit sounds
intriguing and will go
up soon. She quips its
the "please help Adrienne
with her bills exhibit."
I promise to stop by
again and look.)

Mailing the anthology
with one of several
Mother's Day cards
purchased at
Barnes and Noble,
sending it priority
Mail and walking
out proud: I usually
have to do Express!

Driving back, I catch
a fat, almost tooth-less
cat with a sign saying:

"This just in: homeless
consumers invade Iraq."

It makes me laugh, but not as the MBA in my old piece "The Other Foot,"

because I don't have to descend to his level:
his is the terror of day-to-day,
staying alive,
while mine is Al Jolson
on a downsizing Silicon stage
beveled at the corners to make
the transition look smooth,
while grandsons of founders
make spiffs and accelerators
incalculable over
the corpses of an
"asset lite" rage.

The only difference is the space between us and the 4-runner steed beneath me:

he is my left foot;
I am his right.

Introduction

I share an e-mail log I've had with a major technology company:

11/16/2004

Hi-I'd like to schedule a phone screen with you regarding the position that you applied or at (name of company blanked out). At the moment, my schedule is open: Tuesday Nov 16 , 2 - 5 Central timeWednesday Nov 17, 8:30 to 2 and 3 to 5 CST Friday Nov 19, 8 to 5 CST. Please let me know if there is a 30 minute window in there that would work for you, what number I should call, or if you would prefer to contact me.I look forward to hearing from you,
(name blanked out) Technical Recruiting
(name of company blanked out)

Reply:

Hello:

How about either 17 November at 10:00 AM or 19 November, same time?

Best regards,

Reggie Goodwin

Home: (number blanked out)
Cell: (number blanked out)

11/17/2004

Reggie-
I'm booked today at that time, so I have you on my calendar for Friday at 10AM. Would you like me to call you at home or on your cell? Also, the resume I have has your last position at (name of previous company blanked out) in 2003. If you have more recent work experience and would like to submit another resume I can replace this version.
thanks-
(name blanked out)

My reply:

(name blanked out):

I enjoyed speaking with you on the phone this morning. I hope to progress successfully in the next phone interview with the hiring manager, and eventually (everything going positively) the position at .

My work experience has been as a self-employed person. The (name of company blanked out) position I just recently picked up for seasonal work. If you think both are relevant, I will update the resume.

Reggie

11/19/2004

Reggie-
I think the version we have is fine. I forwarded it onto the hiring manager, and I think he is checking around here for people who might have known you at (name of previous company blanked out). Nothing like an inside reference :)
Talk to you soon-
(name blanked out)

11/22/2004

(name blanked out),

Any updates?

Reggie

11/23/2004

HR's reply:

You are on the hiring managers list of calls to make - I looked at the tracking sheet this AM.
(name blanked out)

11/30/2004

(name blanked out):

(name of hiring manager blanked out) - (forgive me: I believe that is the name of the hiring manager you mentioned in our phone interview) hasn't called me. Has the postition been filled?

Regards,

Reggie Goodwin
(number blanked out) (h): best after 9:00 AM
(number blanked out) (m): anytime, VM

12/1/2004

HRs reply:

Not yet. We have 2 interviews scheduled for Friday, so my guess is that he is waiting to see what the outcome is of those before spending time wooing anyone else :) I'll try to follow up with you next T or W and let you know what happened.
(name blanked out)

12/2/2004

(name blanked out):

I've established (number blanked out) with voice mail through Call Notes (again). Any calls for telephone and/or scheduling of personal interviews can now be left there.

Best regards,

Reggie Goodwin

12/7/2004

(name blanked out),

I look forward to your reply.

Best regards,

Reggie Goodwin
(number blanked out) (vm)
(number blanked out) (mobile)

HRs reply:

Reggie-
I am sorry to report than an offer was made yesterday, although it has not yet been accepted. We should know 12/17, if you want to email me after that for status.
(name blanked out)

My reply:

(name blanked out),

I've been out of work since 26 August 2003 (ironically, the anniversary of my father's death). If you can tell me what defeated my chances to even get a face-to-face interview I'd greatly appreciate it. If not with , the information would be valuable with some other company.

I'd also like to know if it's worth my time (or ------'s) to continue my posting on the job site. Thank you.

Reggie

12/21/2004

(The follow-up referred to my calling the HR rep directly on 12/17/2004) :

Reggie-
I promised that I would follow up with you as soon as I knew something. We made an offer yesterday to a candidate that we interviewed back in early November, and he accepted. the position is considered filled and will be officially closed once I get his paperwork back.
I'm sorry - I know you are disappointed. I hope you will continue to watch the (name of company blanked out) job board and apply for other positions you are qualified for.
Best Regards-
(name blanked out)

My reply:

(name blanked out),

I'm a little confused in your interview procedure: why was I phone interviewed if you already had (now I'm counting) three candidates with the 2 the previous Friday and now the November candidate?

Forgive me. This answer doesn't change my current employment prospects. I need something with a little more substance.

Sunday, December 26, 2004 will be 1 year and four months to the date I've been unemployed; underemployed working odd jobs I'm severely overqualified for (like ---).

Reggie

As of 12/27/2004, no reply from the HR Technical Recruiter (I think she's on Christmas vacation).

Many would say I've "burned my bridges." They'd say I should have held my tongue and applied for as many jobs on the web site as possible.

Some points to make here:

1. I posted to this site about a month after my lay off, redoing and polishing my resume at Drake, Beam, Morin and Associates (they'd advise me to hold my peace as well).

2. Up until the phone call - generated by her - I'd receive e-mails about job matches that I apparently qualified for. I'd answer yes, of course, then would hear nothing back or that the job has been filled and the rec closed. OK.

3. This is the first REAL person I've talked to in over a year on this site. This company could have made it easier for me to stay in Austin, Texas. I'm trying to maintain stability for my youngest son to finish high school (currently in the seventh grade). I've gotten offers to leave and if I didn't own a local business or had a family, I would have been GONE a long time ago.

4. She stated "You are on the hiring managers list of calls to make - I looked at the tracking sheet this AM" on November 23.

5. I recall in a phone conversation, the hiring manager was walking my resume around to "see if anyone knew me at my former company." Since it had about 13,000 workers at one time of my employ there, there was a fair chance the manager wasn't successful. If anything derogatory (can't think of anything) were said, I believe I have LEGAL rights against slander.

Trust me. I'm trying to stay positive.

I'm working in shipping in a warehouse larger than 10 football fields; on a production floor of conveyer belts, full of cursing workers, and a delicate ballet between the forces of static and kinetic friction I can only refer to as "a controlled avalanche!"

The physicality is the only thing I appreciate. It allows me to beat the snot out of cardboard boxes, sling them through space, yell a little myself and vent any frustrations about my circumstances at inamimate, unfeeling objects.

Trust me. I'm trying to stay positive. But when you're making 1/5 of what you made as a professional engineer per hour, when you're up at 3 AM when the rest of the world is sleeping, when you've seen your retirement and investments dwindle to dust, that can make you a little testy. I probably need a time out!