The Legend of the Tell Tale Cart of Dot Bomb Layoffs

Sometimes, finding the funny is an effort. Sometimes it takes age, or reflection, or just the simple passage of time. The following is a snippet of a period in my life that was not, at the time, funny. It is, however, completely true.
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I was working 14+hour days at a job I liked for a manager I adored at a company where I was respected - and was exceedingly well-paid. The company was a start-up, and the funding was flowing. We lived LARGE - heck, every start-up at the time did. We had accounts to bill against for dang near whatever we wanted - not just food, but supplies, services - we had a massuse visit the building twice a month, and the car detail guy visited weekly. I'm not kidding. It was incredible.

We grew by leaps and bounds. I was in charge of keeping the company-wide org chart and we once hired 87 people in one month. No lie - 87 in a 30-day period. I was employee #62 - but even at our biggest, we had only about 800 folks. Yes, that's still quite small - but keep in mind this whole story is only over a 2 year period of time. Everyone - every company - was growing by leaps and bounds.

We went public and the money was even BETTER. We drove ourselves insanely hard, demanding 184% out of each person to be*their*best and give*their*all. I remember spending a New Years Day working in the office to bang out a sales proposal and not caring about it at all. It was that kind of atmosphere. We played just as hard as we worked.

And then - the winds changed. Dot com became dot bomb.

It started slowly, really. The delivery of pizzas slowed, Friday keggers were starting to be a bit more conservative, and the tubs of candy and crap from CostCo that kept us fueled weren't refilled as often. The round 1 layoffs were hardly even layoffs really - it was more like 7 people were asked to not come back the next day. Hardly a ripple was felt and, looking back now, maybe that was the problem. The IT folks were dispatched to collect the machines left behind, choosing a sad little cart that our facilities crew had assembled after too many beers one Friday night. The back wheel dragged and it was noisy, so it had been retired to our shipping area.

The round 2 layoffs were bigger and more ... cruel. Suddenly the human resources team, people - friends, really - who were right there with us swilling beer and snacking on popcorn during "movie night", were locking their doors before meetings. Cars started leaving the parking lot before 8pm. The CEO stopped smiling as much and was harder to meet with. My boss met with me and together we figured out how to save as many of "our guys" as we could - candidly discussing the differences between those that could afford to lose their job and those who probably would have a tougher time of finding a replacement gig.

During the round 2 layoffs, our HR team outsourced a "clean up" crew. Essentially they had the fabulous task of clearing out the office (or cube) while one was being told that their services were no longer required, probably because our IT staff was among the departments being cut. It was maybe the second or third day of the round 2 layoffs that I noticed the sound. While these mass layoff meetings were happening, a distinct "screee ... screee ... screee" was heard. The cube groundhogs in the area would pop their heads up from behind the gray-patterned walls to see where the evil sound would stop. It seems that the shipping cart that was being used to collect the laptops ... and that wheel became the sound of impending unemployment.

Round 3 was really nasty. I wouldn't swear to it, but I believe we may have cut our remaining staff by 60%. The 76 page org chart was down to 9 pages, and I was using a much larger font - just to make myself feel better, I guess. And I'll be damned if that same cart didn't make a return. "Screee ... screee ... screee". It was ... the tell tale cart of the dot bomb layoffs.

When the winds of "Round 4 layoffs" started to catch my ear, I walked into my bosses office and told him that I just couldn't take the insecurity anymore. I demanded he put me on the list to be let go. When HR saw his list, they pushed it back saying that he'd made a mistake and to remove my name. He came to me and asked me to reconsider. I would not and instead strolled in at the end of a "highly classified" meeting and said that if I needed to do something to earn being let go that I would but that I'd prefer to keep my dignity intact. (I may have mentioned something about setting up a tequila body shot booth outside my office to help raise money for the company ... but it can't be proven.) I didn't stick around to listen for the cart. I sensed it was on the way.

I was unemployed afterwards for 5 months - partly because I was not looking for work, partly because of the holidays - which are an awful period to try to find employment, and partly because I had three pre-set vacations during that time that would have made it impossible for me to work anyway.
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Today while at Starbucks, I had a 10 minute conversation with a total stranger. We discussed the written work of Steve Martin, the movie "Office Space" and that led to him telling me that he was escaping for a coffee while his company was in the process of downsizing. I told him a much-abridged version of the legend of the tell tale cart of dot bomb layoffs. He said it deserved to be a short story.

And now the legend can live on.