We returned yesterday from a trip to my grandparents. It was nice seeing them again, and they seem to be doing well. My wife met them for the first time also.

It was a family reunion of sorts. My brother was there from Indiana with his wife and daughter. We all hung out for a few days and enjoyed the time. All of the kids were either coming down with or getting over some kind of sniffle, so I can only imagine what we are in store for in the coming days.

Yesterday, we left in the morning so that we could drive the eight hours home in time for me to get to the radio station and do my weekly show. Now, I come home about 40 minutes before airtime. We unpack the car, and I check the answering machine before walking back out the door.

It’s my boss, and he left a message that he knows I’m on vacation, but I should come in on Wednesday for a meeting at one o’clock in the Executive Conference room with his boss, who flew in special for this particular get together. Really? I thought there was a standing order to shoot any programmers that got within fifty feet of the Executive Conference room. The punch line is that my boss says, “It’s about what you probably think it is.” My wife looks right at me and says, “You just got laid off.” Damn.

I head to the station. Whereupon I find Men’s Basketball being broadcast. Apparently there was a schedule change on February 14th where this week’s show of mine was preempted to make up for technical difficulties that prevented two other games from being broadcast. This makes four weeks in a row that we have been bumped, and this one being last minute, no notice. I pigeonholed the sports director about the change and he says that he put out an email and made mention of it at the general meeting. Naturally, I was not at the general meeting. Nor did I get the email. Nor did he bother to put anything in the mailbox at the station.

I lost my job and lost my airtime. What’s next?

My wife thinks that I should quit doing radio since it is getting to be a pain in the ass and stressing me out. This coming on top of the fiasco with another show that I was doing where the rug was pulled out from under me and another DJ put in. In that case, the program director didn’t get an email response from me so assumed that I was not interested in continuing. Again, I never saw the email. She admitted that she could have communicated a lot better and should have tried to call or something, like she did when she set up the last schedule and the one before that, but the damage was done.

I told Number One to have all of her buddies call the station and complain. I told my co-host the same thing. Then I wrote a long missive to the station manager and copied in the general manager and program director.

The station manager passed the buck, as he is prone to do. He deferred to the sports director about the scheduling. And he says that I was correctly entered in the distribution lists. The program director just ignores my emails at this point. The general manager wrote back that she updated the email list and that neither email (previous and current) of mine was in the distribution lists. Funny, how did I get mails before at the old domain? And why is the station manger saying that I’m there in the distribution list if general manager insists that I’m not?

The sports director wrote back with a long missive of his own that covered his tracks and was apologetic very slightly. It was also condescending at the end with the summary being “find another time slot if you don’t like it.” Fuck you.

We have emailed back and forth since then with him explaining how the sports sponsorship works. Which is a lot different from the weekly sponsorship in the sense that for the sums that they get (in the tens of thousands), they offer up guarantees of number of games broadcast to assure the sponsor of a number of times that the spots will run.

And we are non-commercial.

So sports trumps because they make guarantees. And they make guarantees since they are pulling tens of thousands down from each of the sponsors for a given sport.

Non-commercial. Right.

Generally, I think that grass roots activism is the way to go to push back with the station. Build a base. He is really pushing for a site redesign. Sigh. I guess I have the time now. But I think that this is beginning to bore the tar out of me.

Today, I got in to work early. Number One knows that something is up since I asked her to make sure that I was up early in exchange for a ride to school. We stopped off at the Sunoco and got coffee first. In a way, it was like the old days when I took her to kindergarten and we would stop for a coffee for me, and a hot chocolate and a sticky bun for her.

When I got in, no one was there. I left a phone message for my boss and an email that simply asked, “Do we get 30 days or 60 days” in the subject line.

Everyone else wandered in well after nine. Since I missed the official notification, everyone was kind of sketchy at first, until I coughed up enough details and told them that my boss had called me at home to clue me in. Someone else had stopped by before, and had let the date slip, so I was on to that.

May 16th.

Official paper notification will be on March 13th or so. I will get two weeks for every year, and since my fifth year anniversary is June 19th, I get credit for only four years. But it’s not just me that they are trying to nickel and dime. My boss has a hire date of 1987, but they are trying to pull something funny and shorten that up to something like 1999 or so. I told him to ask HR whom his lawyer should talk to. That should get their attention.

The CIO sent one of his directs from New York to sit with us. We must have had the same wrong information, because he and I were in the Executive Conference room and everyone else in the usual conference room. He tried to feel me out by asking something along the line of how do I feel about this. I shrugged and said that this was just part of the game in the modern world. No sense being all worked up about it since everyone has a sob story. That wasn’t what he expected. I think that it knocked him for a loop.

There was a meeting with all the IT in North America on the phone, and people were upset, concerned, all that. The idea is to reduce the number of sites that handle the IT stuff for the company, not a reduction for budget reasons. Overall, the company IT departments will be adding people this year despite the layoff. Huh?

One person emailed the CIO and said that he flat out lied to us in previous “all hands meetings,” a.k.a. “The Hour Of Power.” Someone else called out the CIO on his idea that the company would help with relocation in the event that people relocate for open positions. The allegation was that the person relocated from New York to Texas and “HR was no help whatsoever.” The CIO responded that this was a case of one person, and because the focus was on a large number of impacted people now, HR couldn’t and wouldn’t screw it up.

I think he missed the point entirely. The issue is trust. If we can’t trust in the small, why should we trust in the large? Failure scales better than success.

There seems to be a lot of “here is the decision, now fill in the details.” Example: one of my coworkers is one of two programmers for the company in North America versed in the XYZ application. Building 1 will use XYZ until August 31, and Building 2 is the back up for that. But the coworker is gone in May. Just in case anyone thinks that they can cross their fingers and hope nothing goes wrong, XYZ was down this morning, I think for junk data that Building 1 entered into some table in the database. Another example: my boss is the only person period who does this other process that crosses something on the order of a gazillion systems. Not a lot of activity, but enough that we haven’t abandoned it. Now what? Gap analysis anyone?

This will be a fiasco.

Of course, we were our usual insouciant selves. This layoff was not unexpected. The question was always “when,” not “if.” Things have been declining for a long time now. We just didn’t know the date.

So we said things like “we didn’t screw up the letter program, why are we getting the boot?” and “If we fuck up and get an article in the newspaper, can we stay too?” I don’t know what the New York babysitter with us thought of that.

Queen Bee asked me how I was doing. I told her fine, and I think I meant it. In a way, it’s a relief. Now I have a target date that I have to stick to in finding another job. And I am done finally. This just changes the decision criteria for a new job. I don’t have the luxury of being picky. But I’m not desperate yet.

I told the kids this evening. I also told them that we would have to clamp down on the spending until things are clearer. Number Three was upset that I put the brakes on summer camp. Number One is planning on a trip to Arizona to visit her friend when said friend moves there this summer, but she needs to think airfare without including me.

All of this is a shaking up of my sleepiness in life. Blessed is the one who quickens the dead. One can be dead, or near dead, and still convert oxygen to carbon dioxide. I think that I have been complacent with my radio show; that has to change. I have been complacent with my job; that has to change too.

My wife is the best. She got me some clothes that are really nice and totally rock. I’m still wearing one of the jackets. And I haven’t sprinkled it with coffee yet.

She also got me a book I wanted, Lure the Tiger Out of the Mountains. I read the first strategy, Cross the sea and fool the sky. No idea where the name comes from, but the premise is that, like the chinese proverb, “A familiar sight provokes no attention.”

Indeed. I am reminded of the stunt that the kids pulled on my return from the weekend activities. I came in hurt, limping, tired, and generally stinky. Wife and I figured “fend for yourself” night for dinner.

About 15 minutes later, there was a knock at the door. I looked out and saw a pizza delivery man there. Huh? I looked at Wife, she at me, and we both said “I didn’t order pizza.” Down the stairs comes the Littlest Who In Whoseville For The Moment going “It’s for us.”

Sure. Wishful thinking, kid.

I opened the door, and asked if he was delivering to our address. Yes, he replies. There was a pause as I stared at the delivery guy for a few seconds like he had three heads. Didn’t he know that we didn’t order anything and he had the wrong address? Then the light bulb went off. I whipped around and yelled for The Oldest.

“Pizza’s here!” came the chorus in stereo from Number 1 and Number 2. Down the stairs came two kids with twenty bucks. In a flash, Number 3 grabbed the pizza, Number 2 paid the man, Oldest said keep the change, and the delivery guy laughed his ass off. I never knew what hit me.

The thing is, they had trouped through not five minutes before. Of course making noise and bickering, but not too much noise. Into the kitchen and back out. Making noise, but not too much noise. Just enough for us parents to want to not be involved, but not enough for Wife and I to have to intervene. Familiar without drawing too much attention.

Clever bastards.

I am so glad I have this book. I might learn enough to get out of this alive. Or at least have half a chance.

Sure. Wishful thinking kid.