Upside Down, Turned Around and Twisted

That's been me over the past week. I had previously explained my job situation...well on Friday I was thrown for a bit of a loop. I went down to HR to discuss an employee issue and my manager called in from NC to let me know that they are shutting down our department and moving it to the NC office. Now, this is not a total surprise. The work has been dwindling and we have been trying very hard to move people into other positions...it just happened much sooner than I thought it would!

So, the impact to me is that they are trying to find another position for me within the department. I am not sure what the position entails exactly and I don't know if I will like what they come up with, sooooo...I am going to do all of the outplacement seminars and everything. Might not be a bad idea just in general to get a real feel for what is out there and what isn't. I do have the option of taking the severance package and leaving on the first of April if I choose to not stay with the company.

There were 7 people on the team on Friday when we discussed the impact of the announcement. I had to fire one of them before the announcement on Monday due to an unrelated issue. Monday sucked. Out of the 6 that are left, one is planning on retiring and two others are in cross training for other roles currently, so the hope is that they will transition fully on April 1. The other 3 are troublesome. All are wonderful people and great workers. They are definitely assets however, there may be difficulties with skill sets and dealing with the changes to begin with.

I will say that I admire my company greatly for their fairness in this. They are waiting until April 1 so that people will still receive their 2009 bonus which will be paid at end of 1st quarter. Because they are doing April 1 instead of March 31st, benefits will be extended through the month. They are offering a payment in addition to the severance to make up the difference for COBRA. Severance is the standard 2 weeks pay for every year with the company. The HR rep has scheduled every other week 1:1s with everyone interested in finding different positions so they can review them for skill sets and get a jump on open requisitions and anything new she may be aware of. They have also retained an outplacement group to come in and do two workshop sessions...they will work with us 1:1 to go over resumes and interviewing and the like. I'll admit, I'm kind of curious! (Maybe I can find a job with them?! It seems like it would be an interesting thing to do!)

So, with that said, this past week was NUTS. Monday and Tuesday were meetings, and a termination (which was THE strangest termination I have ever done.), announcements, more meetings, still trying to get work done, the global head was in the office on Wednesday, my boss was in M-Th, and job performance reviews were to be completed by last night. Crazy, crazy times!

Oh, and I had class on Tuesday night and my homework wasn't done. Great. Thankfully she was pretty understanding but now I have to figure out how to get it on paper and get it to her since it was our last class. *sigh* I'm a dork.