Chris Hansen’s blog

I am about to be made redundant from my job (=US “laid off”). I have been saying that this would happen for months, but there has been no official confirmation of this until yesterday.

My boss called me last Thursday to set up a meeting for 11 am Monday with my boss’s boss. I asked him whether this were “the meeting”, but he was noncomittal. As he isn’t very bright or able, it didn’t surprise me.

I arrived at 10:55 am yesterday to be greeted by my very surprised boss’s boss. “I have a meeting upstairs at 11!” he said. I told him that my boss had set up the meeting for 11, but he said, “I’ll only be a half-hour or so. P (my boss) just said the meeting would be sometime after 11.” So I sat and read the newspaper.

At 12:15 J (my boss’s boss) came downstairs and said, “I just need a cigarette–give me 5 minutes.” Ten minutes later he was back and we had our meeting.

I was pretty frank in expressing my views. They have mismanaged me, and missed a chance to use me for things that they are deficient in, such as presentations. J told me, “Well, business is down and we don’t see anything coming up soon.” So I just said, “Make me an offer, then.” He perked right up.

Of course, I couldn’t see HR until 2 (it was now 1 pm) and I had to eat lunch and hadn’t brought my metformin (diabetes pill). But, I went to Victoria Place for lunch anyway–last time, I think. I started out by going to Subway for a BMT. I was told, “Sorry, we don’t have any ham, pepperoni, or salami.” It dawned on me that they must have been buying cheap Irish pork products, which have now been withdrawn from sale over dioxin contamination in the pigs’ feed. I went to Spudulike and got my usual potato with cottage cheese filling.

Back to work, and to HR. I told the HR functionary about my predicament the past few months and years, and she was suitably impressed. She said that there were two ways of exit: a negotiated agreement, and statutory redundancy. She said, “Most people go for the agreement, as statutory redundancy is only 1-1/2 weeks pay per year worked.” I reminded her that, as I am 56, my statutory redundancy pay is 2-1/2 weeks per year worked, and is additionally, tax-free. She didn’t seem to know that (I don’t think they have many workers over 45 or so, when the higher rate kicks in). Anyway, I asked her to summarise the terms of each and send it along via email. We would get back in touch next week, after my Practitioners’ exam on Friday, and settle the matter.

I think I’ll do contract work again, but try a bit harder to get more work than just teaching the testing course. HWMBO is not happy, but I think he accepts that we will be OK on just his salary and whatever I can make. I shall have to be less extravagant, but that will be OK. By the way, no condolences necessary! I’m very happy about this and hope that I will be able to use this time more productively than I used the time after I was made redundant from Searchspace.

I made steaks for dinner…the least I could do for HWMBO.

And boy, am I relieved to be almost shut of the Indian outsourcer. While I’ve had nothing to do for most of the time, it’s not a good feeling to get paid a good salary for doing nothing.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 08:58 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.