Termed With Pay

I am one of the several million people terminated as a result of the economic corrections going on. I’ve been unemployed for a day and I’m already going insane, so I decided to start this blog to keep the crazy down. Don’t know if anybody’s going to read it except me, but what the hell.

Let’s start with my monkey-spank severance letter and the manner by which I received it. My impending severance wasn’t a surprise, I did know about it months in advance, so I’m fortunate in that regard. I still needed ‘official’ notice, though, a formal handing over of the appropriate paperwork. I live in Pasadena, CA, and the person giving me the pink slip lives and works in Calabasas, CA. So, on 04 Mar 2009, I got to drive from Pasadena to Calabasas to get my severance paperwork at 8 AM.

You read that right, I was the one making the trip. At 8 AM. On the 101 through the Valley. Did I mention that it was raining too?
   If you’ve never been on LA highways in the rain a) count yourself lucky, and b) imagine giving car keys to a million eight-year-olds and letting them just go have fun.

The trip takes half an hour in the best circumstances, and that morning it took over an hour. Man, I hate the West Valley. Bastards. To be fair, there’s no manual for this kind of thing, but if I were delivering the bad news, I would have been the one to make the drive. The fact that I - the terminee - had to make the trip speaks volumes about the priorities of corporate America that mere words cannot convey.

I spent two hours in traffic, there and back, to get a brief letter that states in perfect Corporate Monkey-Spankese : ‘...the Company must undergo a job elimination and reduction in workforce. We regret that as part of the necessary reduction in force, your employment with the company will be terminated...’ and blah, and blah, and blah.

So now I’m terminated with pay, at least for a few weeks. It’s only been two days now, like a sick day, but it’s not like calling in sick when you’re not really sick. If you call in sick you know there’s always work to get back to. Now I got nowhere else to go. And that’s what’s making me crazy.