As some of you may know my wife and I had our 3rd kid almost 6 months ago now. Ever since then we have been trying to reduce our bills and get to a point where she could stop working full time and stay home with the baby. With Day Care costing what it does it was nearly a wash anyways but she still made a decent contribution to the support of the family. Well I sold my nice cars and started driving some older American Iron, paid off some Credit Cards with the proceeds and cut back on almost everything except my cigar budget, I hid a little extra away for that. 
And all of it paid off, last thursday was the wife's last day of full time work. We actually got really lucky in that the company we worked for decided to open up a weekend work from home part-time support position that was a lot like what she was already doing. So not only could she stay home with the kids, she could also work part-time every other weekend as well as work a house cleaning gig or two and still come out being able to contribute the same amount.
The Fast Forward to Yesterday.....I'm at work, it is(was) a small privately held company with about 160 employees. We make software for the Long Term Care industry. And it's definitely been a struggle, we haven't exactly been profitable but we have(had) an owner with ties to the industry who wanted to give back and make it work.
Well all these "suits" have been walking around lately and things picked up yesterday when all of a sudden we get an email "Everyone to the main meeting area, Larry (owner) has an announcement to make". So we all walk down there and everyone is getting nervous. Larry comes out and tells us we've been sold to another company effective immediately and they are going to be making immediate and substantial layoffs. "Everyone go back to your cube and wait for an email. You will get one of two emails. One asking you to report to a conference room where your severance package will be discussed or another telling you that you are part of "the vision going forward". And we were to expect the email in the next five minutes.
Well you can imagine what this did to everyone's morale. And then the 5 minutes turns into 30 minutes and we're still waiting. Then we start seeing people walking towards the conference rooms which are right by our cubes.... no email yet. Then FINALLY the email comes and my entire department was spared. We were about the only department who didn't suffer some cuts. We are a small group of 6 who basically keep all the software up and running, and thats no easy feat considering the software we put out. LOL
So I'm just thankful I still have a job. I guess the severance packages were very generous, I would have ended up with about 12 weeks pay. But with 3 kids, a wife, a mortgage and enough other bills around in this job market I'm glad I'm not out there worrying about finding something else in time. And a lot of friends got let go as well, I've been here 6 years and in a fairly small company like this you get to know a lot of people pretty well.
And to top it all off, it was so stressful I forgot to smoke a cigar last night. I couldn't relax to save my life but I bet that would have helped. Guess that's enough for now, I feel like if I write any more I'll be taking Vince's Sunday morning post spot.
My motto for today.... "Be thankful"
Trent
And all of it paid off, last thursday was the wife's last day of full time work. We actually got really lucky in that the company we worked for decided to open up a weekend work from home part-time support position that was a lot like what she was already doing. So not only could she stay home with the kids, she could also work part-time every other weekend as well as work a house cleaning gig or two and still come out being able to contribute the same amount.
The Fast Forward to Yesterday.....I'm at work, it is(was) a small privately held company with about 160 employees. We make software for the Long Term Care industry. And it's definitely been a struggle, we haven't exactly been profitable but we have(had) an owner with ties to the industry who wanted to give back and make it work.
Well all these "suits" have been walking around lately and things picked up yesterday when all of a sudden we get an email "Everyone to the main meeting area, Larry (owner) has an announcement to make". So we all walk down there and everyone is getting nervous. Larry comes out and tells us we've been sold to another company effective immediately and they are going to be making immediate and substantial layoffs. "Everyone go back to your cube and wait for an email. You will get one of two emails. One asking you to report to a conference room where your severance package will be discussed or another telling you that you are part of "the vision going forward". And we were to expect the email in the next five minutes.
Well you can imagine what this did to everyone's morale. And then the 5 minutes turns into 30 minutes and we're still waiting. Then we start seeing people walking towards the conference rooms which are right by our cubes.... no email yet. Then FINALLY the email comes and my entire department was spared. We were about the only department who didn't suffer some cuts. We are a small group of 6 who basically keep all the software up and running, and thats no easy feat considering the software we put out. LOL
So I'm just thankful I still have a job. I guess the severance packages were very generous, I would have ended up with about 12 weeks pay. But with 3 kids, a wife, a mortgage and enough other bills around in this job market I'm glad I'm not out there worrying about finding something else in time. And a lot of friends got let go as well, I've been here 6 years and in a fairly small company like this you get to know a lot of people pretty well.
And to top it all off, it was so stressful I forgot to smoke a cigar last night. I couldn't relax to save my life but I bet that would have helped. Guess that's enough for now, I feel like if I write any more I'll be taking Vince's Sunday morning post spot.
My motto for today.... "Be thankful"
Trent
