My old place of work had a particular culture that couldn’t really, in all honesty, be described as “corporate” - Something that, genuinely, was a plus for the place as much as that sounds like a diss - but at the same time, wasn’t anything like the real world either (Something ably demonstrated by the fact that one of our most prominent employees was occasionally better known as Pretty Tony, despite his name actually being Mike. Don’t ask). It was Business By The Seat Of Its Pants more often than not, as we continually investigated all the exciting new ways in which Murphy’s Law could come on any given day, but there were also times when the Best Laid Plans also came together and still left everyone feeling somewhat confused about what the hell had just happened.
A couple of years after I’d joined the company, for example, we had a companywide meeting. We were a pretty small company, maybe 100 people or so, so that wasn’t the massive undertaking that it sounded like; we’d all push and shove ourselves into the big conference room and hang around uncomfortably while listening to whatever we were all gathered for. Generally, companywide meetings fell into two categories - Bad News, or Someone’s Birthday (We celebrated people’s birthdays on a monthly basis, for the most part, although people who’d been there forever and/or were the heart of the company got their own celebrations. We were kind of awesome, in that way) - and we knew that this wasn’t a birthday, so as we went in, everyone was gossiping about what was about to happen. We all thought we’d pretty much figured it out; things had been slow, and we were expecting to be told that things would be rocky and maybe there’d be layoffs or cutbacks or something similar. As we milled in the room, expecting the worst, we were slowly joined by the people in charge of the company: The managers, the VP of Customer Service, the head of sales, the person in charge of accounting. But the meeting didn’t start. We all stood there, confused, making jokes and small talk, and wondering what was up, and someone said that we were waiting for the last Big Cheeses: The owner, the HR person and the director of operations. So, we waited. And we waited.
Eventually, the VP of Customer Service made some kind of, Well let’s just go ahead and start anyway announcement, and launched into this amazing, unexpected, quasi-inspirational speech about, yes, times are hard and belts have to be tightened, but we shouldn’t take it to heart because we were all incredible and doing our best, so let’s all work together for a better future! Truly, if you’d heard it, you would’ve thought that we were all soldiers about to head into the easiest battle in the world or something; it was over the top and completely unearned, but it worked nonetheless: We all got fired up by the idea of a company that we believed in - even though, if you’d asked us, we weren’t sure that we did - and that treated everyone as family. Let’s all do this thing! we were thinking as one, when the VP dropped in as an afterthought, oh, and there may be some organizational changes, but you’ll find out about those in time. Now let’s get back to work! Go team!
And, as we left the room, we noticed that the director of operations wasn’t in her office, where she’d been when we went in. This didn’t seem like a big deal; we all assumed that she’d gone for an early lunch or something. True, when she didn’t come back that afternoon, it seemed slightly odd, but maybe something had come up. That would’ve explained why she didn’t come in the next day, or the day after that, after all.
We never really knew for sure that she’d been let go until she came to get her stuff (Or did someone come for her? I can’t remember), and then it dawned on us: That whole meeting was to distract us while she was getting fired. While we were being given an announcement about how the people were the company, she was being told that, actually it was the other people who were the company and would she mind terribly if she left without making a scene? There’s something funny and sad about the two things happening at the same time, but if I’m honest, the mix of both of those things - The genuine feeling that the company was more of a family than just a business, and the fact that we were seemingly told that specifically to distract us from knowing that someone was being fired - feels like it somehow sums up my affection and confusion about those days, and for the company in general. I miss a lot of the people I worked with, there, but I’m also left with the feeling that I was never quite sure what I was doing there in the first place.
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Content © Graeme McMillan, 2008-2009.
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