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.