Inhuman Swill

They say that into every sunny day must come a few clouds. Last Tuesday, a week ago today, a few huge thunderheads descended on One Lincoln Plaza. I escaped sudden death in the storm in a couple of senses, but I still caught a fatal dose of pneumonia.

Laura and I went on vacation to California last week, so that she could compete on the PBS game show MasterChef USA, hosted by British superchef Gary Rhodes. On Tuesday, we returned to our hotel room to find a message waiting. It asked me to call my boss at Sesame Workshop.

It was six in the evening, Pacific time, so I called my boss at home. "Bad news," he said. "Today our department was slashed to the bone. Management decided to change their business plan, and they're going to outsource most of the Web site work from now on. Out of forty people they're only keeping nine permanently."

I sat there numbly on my rock-hard queen bed, waiting to hear which group I was in.

"There's a transition team, though," said my boss. "That's the permanent nine, plus seven more who will stay on until the end of April to help wrap up loose ends and prepare bits of the site to be packaged and maybe sold or given to partners. You're in the temporary part of the transition team."

"Wow," I said—perhaps not an appropriate response, but the best I could manage.

"There will be severance of some kind. I don't know what yet, though. I'm really sorry you had to hear this while you're on vacation. I gave HR every chance to get in touch with you before you left, but they didn't do it."

"I guess it was a pretty awful day at the office today?"

My boss sighed. "It went about as well as could be expected, but it was a bloodbath. Just brutal. Twenty-four people got laid off effective immediately. Originally you were slated for that group, but they weren't leaving me a single programmer for the transition team, so I was able to get you until April."

Small favors. Today I'm back in the office, and it's miserable here. It's like a war zone—not many people left, and the ones that are have hollow eyes and haunted looks. I met with HR this morning, who told me they haven't settled yet on what my severance package will be. This distresses me, because it seems that everyone who was here last Tuesday has a definite severance offer in hand. (The team was divided up into three groups—immediate fires, impending fires, and "permanent" keeps—each group being taken to a separate room and told its fate, including severance terms.) Why am I the odd man out?

I would almost rather have been laid off immediately, because there are any number of job possibilities being dangled in my face today, and I would have the (rumored) six weeks pay plus one week for every year of my employment (nearly three) in hand. As it is, I have to wait things out, and if I should leave before the end of April, I will likely forfeit my severance.

As one of my coworkers put it: "But what happened to the Muppet-y goodness?"

Take it up with the accountants.