Monday 8th of April 2002 – Redundancies
I’m at work today with not a lot to do… A lot has happened over here in the last couple of months…
Twenty more people have been made redundant last month. I managed to escape again, but we lost 3 engineers, one of them Raj, who was employee number 4! He wasn’t the best programmer in the world, but he’d been around for a long time and it was quite a shock. We knew, on that Friday, that the people ‘earmarked’ to go would get a phone call, be asked to go to Avarice (of all the rooms) and then be told that they had to leave immediately, as they were being made redundant. I was sat away from my desk, I said that if they wanted me they would have to come and get me, and I wasn’t answering my phone.
At around 11 pm Rob’s phone rang and he went upstairs. Rob’s ‘dismissal’ upset everyone. He was actually called back from a course the day before, but they didn’t tell him why (although he suspected). From my desk, early that day, I could hear him asking Matt F. (Line Manager) why they had asked him to come in that day. Matt F. kept saying he didn’t know, but it was so obvious. Rob is a massive guy (he’s a body builder) and I think M. Field was just too scared to say anything. So Rob went first, and then came back 15 mins later saying that he was leaving. Everyone was pretty shocked as he’d been around for over two years.
By that point I started thinking that I was definitely going to go too and I felt sick!!! Then Tim’s phone rang, just after Raj joked with him saying that Tim’s phone was going to ring next… Once again, shocked faces. Tim came down, he was really upset, and didn’t have much to say, he just left, while Rob was chatting to everyone and putting on a good show. Next thing we know, Raj’s phone rang. Raj told us, they had called him up, and we all knew what that meant. We also knew that there were going to be 3 people made redundant in engineering, so we knew it was over. We were all relieved and very angry at the same time. The worse thing of all is that Phill T. wasn’t even around (once again) to say something to make us feel better about losing the guys. Phill was somewhere in the building, and Rob said bye to him and I think Raj did too. But he’s just not very popular anymore.
It’s quite amazing how the morale in here has done a 180 degree turn since I joined. I went for a drink on Friday as there were another 4 people leaving too (this time of their own accord) and everyone I spoke to said they wanted to leave. Everybody wants to leave. I’ve been saying I want to leave, especially after the pathetic pay rise I got (3%), and the fact that Stephane – who’s 6 years younger than me, doesn’t have a degree – earns more than me and got a better pay rise. I complained about it, to no avail (we found out about our pay rises last Thursday before the bank holiday). I spent 3 days last week just updating my cv – but only applied for one job. I don’t really want to go yet, hoping for the next round of redundancies so I can get some redundancy money.
This is definitely a sexist environment, I do as much work as they do, and the boys get all the credit. So now, from now on I’ll do minimal work and just get paid for it. As for Steph getting paid more than me, well, he’s been into computers since he was born, so despite his youth, he does know a lot more than I do (I wrote my first program at the age of 23, he is now 24), so, I couldn’t really argue with that, and because I work with him, I know how much he knows. It’s just that when it comes to doing a job, I always deliver, I don’t get distracted, and my stuff works, Surely that’s important??!! It’s a bit of an awkward situation, though, because we’re mates, he’s a nice guy, we get on well.