The Layoff Guide: Boss’ Edition

The economy is going all sorts of crazy, which means that more and more businesses are being forced to cut back on costs.  Unfortunately, sometimes “cutting costs” translates to laying off employees.  No one wants to deal with this ghastly business, but hey, it happens. 

So you’re a manager at Big Company X, and you have to lay off one person on the team you manage.  But everyone is good at what they do!  They all do a good job, they all show up on time, and no one really deserves to get the boot more than anyone else.  Whatever do you do?  Here’s what I propose:  make the layoffs fun, and turn it into a game!

Layoff “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”:

This method of laying off employees can also be used to determine how much $ you get for a raise.  So you hold a conference call, or call everyone into the meeting room, letting them know that you’re going to discuss something serious.  But then, you put each of your employees in the “hot seat,” and ask them a series of questions in ascending difficulty, as per the game show, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”.  You can change the title to “Who Doesn’t Want to Get Laid off?,” though.  You should definitely make the questions all relate to the company so you can assess who is the most loyal employee, and who has done the most company research.  Obviously, the person who gets the least amount of questions correct gets laid off.

When using this game to determine raises, change the scale.  You know that Big Company X isn’t giving anyone a million dollar raise.  Except for maybe Ms. Senior Vice President.  Make the highest questions worth $10,000, and make the lowest worth $1.  How funny would it be if one of your employees got a dollar raise?! 

Layoff “Jeopardy!”:

Use company-related questions for this, just as in the above-mentioned “Millionaire:  Layoff Edition. ”  Follow the general rules for this game show, using the traditional “you-give-the-answer-as-the-clue,-the-employee-has-to-word-the-response-as-a-question-format.”  Potential “Jeopardy!” categories could include:  “The  Boss’ Favorite Foods,”  “Name That Conference,”  “People Who Come in Late,” and “Whose Conference Call Number Is This?”  You can even add a twist to it:  Anyone who finishes in the negative numbers has to pay the company that much money, and get laid off.  Anyone who finishes in the positive numbers gets that money as a bonus.  Makes it more fun, huh?

Layoff “Monopoly”:

Make one of those personalized Monopoly boards to increase the excitement of this.  For example, I’d have “Monopoly:  IBM Edition.”  All of the properties around the board would be companies IBM has acquired / would like to acquire.  Houses and Hotels would become Labs and Office Buildings.  Board game pieces would include:  Dude in a Suit, Laptop, Briefcase, Data Sheet, and Cup of Coffee.

Follow your typical Monopoly rules for this, giving people “paychecks” whenever they pass Go, and sending them to jail (for some white collar crime).  This is a great game to use to decide layoffs, because it will tell you who the best performers are – who closes the most deals, who can make the company the most money, and who is the most shrewd businessperson.

Layoff “Scrabble”:

So you play a usual game of Scrabble, except there’s a catch:  you can only spell business-related words!  Acceptable words would include:  dynamic, data, info, incent, client, commute, coffee, lunch, meeting, etc.  When an employee doesn’t have a business word to put down, they have to put down something and then attempt to explain its relation to the land of Corporate America.  For instance, if someone spells “bull” – the person could say it refers to a bull market, and the bull people say at meetings.  This would allow them to remain in the game.  If the person spells something unrelated to work and can’t justify any relation, lay ’em off.

Layoff “American Idol:”

Have people “audition” for you, and make up songs about the company.  You, and a panel of other bosses, will then judge the contestants based on originality and creativity.  This method is both entertaining, and effective.  You can even use the company songs that people make up in advertising campaigns!  Sweet deal, huh?

Layoff “Survivor:”

Instead of sending people to a deserted island, you lock them in the conference room with limited coffee and donuts.  As the boss, you periodically go into the room and hold challenges for the employees.  These could include making a communications or marketing plan, or who can write a whitepaper the fastest, for example.  You then see who everybody wants to “vote off.”  This person then gets laid off.  This is a great way to do things because it encourages teamwork and healthy competition. 

Layoff “Sorry!”:

This one’s just plain funny.  Come on, how appropriate is this?  Whoever loses gets laid off, and you say “Sorry!”  Enough said.

And, when you’re done with layoffs, how to do the reorganization:

I’d like to thank my fiance for this idea. 😉

Rather than having meeting after meeting after meeting to decide the new reporting structure and everybody’s spot on the totem pole, just throw things into a hat.  Get two hats:  one for the slips of paper with job roles written on them, the other for the papers with salaries on them.  It just makes life that much easier, and avoids the stress that is induced from too many hours in meetings and the nausea you can get from looking at too many PowerPoints and hierarchal charts of managers and direct reports.  So you call Ted’s name, and pull a paper out of the Job Role Hat:  He’s going to be the CEO.  You then pull a slip of paper out of the Salary Hat:  He’s going to get the pay of the intern.  Next up is Sally.  She’s going to report to herself as manager, and will get entry-level pay.  See how fun this can make things?

Corporate Word/Phrase of the Week:

“…the most marketing-weary universe on the planet” – I heard this on some marketing webcast this past week.  The person was saying something like, “Older generations are the most-marketing-weary universe on the planet when it comes to social media.”  Looks like someone forgot his basic cosmology.  Universe = larger than a planet, therefore, the universe cannot be contained on a planet.  Nice try at a metaphor, bud.

The Different Types of Work Days: Vol. II

As promised, here is the anxiously awaited volume II of the Different Types of Work Days Handbook.  You’ll notice that, in this installment, in addition to the more annoying types of work days that we all encounter, there are a couple of enjoyable days thrown in, as well.  It’s shocking that enjoyable work days exist, I know.  Almost seems like sort of a paradox…

Hardly Anything, then Lots to Finish (HALF):

HALF days are so titled because they are split between a morning of absolutely nothing to do, and an afternoon of “oh-crap-how-am-I-going-to-get-this-done-before-the-day-is-over?”  What, did you think it was called a half day because you actually get to leave early?  Ha.  On a HALF day, you come in at 9 and realize that no work has materialized since leaving at 5 the previous day.  A common HALF day goes as follows:  you sit at your desk, you eat your granola bar, you have five cups of coffee, you organize your e-mail into folders and sub-folders and sub-sub-folders, you sit, you rearrange your desk, you sit, you go to the bathroom (twice, due to all the coffee), you sit, you make your rounds of the other cubicles and bother your coworkers who actually have work to do, you sit, and then finally, after three hours that just passed in the time of about five hours, it’s noon.  You eat your lunch slowly, and prepare yourself for an STD (Slow, Toturous Day, as defined in vol. I).  However, once the clock strikes 2, a workplace phenomenon occurs:  your inbox is suddenly inundated with a barrage of e-mails coming in at lightning speed, and, at least a dozen of the received e-mails have to-do items, coming from upper management, due by the end of the day.  Your heart races from the previously chugged five cups of coffee, and suddenly, you switch into DAMN mode (Doing A lot of Meaningless Nothing, also outlined in vol. I), typing e-mails at never-before-charted speeds, making a 50-slide PowerPoint deck in under 20 minutes, and writing a five-page article in a half hour.  By the end of the day, you’ve crashed from your caffeine high, and make the evening commute in a daze.

*Note:  HALF days are known to creep up on you at any point during the week.  Be prepared!

Endless Work, then Waiting and Waiting and Waiting… (EWWWW):

EWWWW’s are pretty similar to HALF days.  However, the key difference is that an EWWWW starts with a ton of work, and ends with a ton of nothing, rather than vice versa.  On a typical EWWWW, you have about five unfinished assignments that you just couldn’t finish the day before, and that need to be completed for that big budget meeting with the boss times three (your boss’ boss’ boss’) at 1 p.m.  So you work and work and work, surviving on the fumes of coffee wafting in from the neighboring offices…since you didn’t have enough time to get your own cup because you’ve been working non-stop since you came in early at 8 a.m.  After you put the finishing touches on your 500 line budget spreadsheet at 12:58 and send it off for the 1 p.m. meeting, you breathe a gargantuan sigh of relief.  You can eat lunch, and start to relax.  However, the second you finish the last bite of your turkey on wheat – thus marking the end of lunch – time does something curious and unexplained:  it slooooooows down (many o’s = slows down a lot).  Now, during this post-lunch slump, the only e-mails you’re receiving are those annoying marketing newsletters from all those sites you bookmarked to impress your boss.  And even those are coming in at the snail-fast speed of about one every hour-and-a-half.  And that’s when you realize it:  you’re day has been put into slow motion until your computer clock reads 5:00 p.m., and there’s nothing you can say but EWWW.

*Note:  EWWW’s occur in about the same timeframe as HALF days.  Meaning, always be on the lookout for an EWWW coming your way…

Long Lunch Day:

I promised you that there are actually some fun work days in existence.  This day pretty much speaks for itself:  you come to the office, and realize that it’s the boss’ birthday (of course, she’s turning 30…again), or that a coworker is retiring.  Thus, such events can only mean one thing:  double L (Long Lunch)!  This changes the dynamic of your whole day – you were originally going to mosey down to the cafeteria during the designated lunch period of 12-12:30, but now everything is different, all thanks to Ms. Bosslady’s birthday (it’s a given that she goes by “Ms.”), or to That Guy Who’s Retiring.  At 11 o’clock, everyone leaves to go to that quaint Italian restaurant that’s about 20 minutes away.  There are about 15 people from the office at lunch, so naturally, it takes quite a while for everyone to order and eat.  It’s 1 o’clock, and you gleefully realize that you’ve been at lunch for 2 hours.  And the best part?  It’s all on the Corporate Card.

*Note:  Double L’s typically happen on the closest Friday to the important occasion.  If the birthday is on a Wednesday, you go to LL that Friday.  If the person announces retirement on a Thursday, you go to LL the next day.  You get the picture.

“Fridays:”

Notice the quotes around “Friday.”  That’s because a Friday doesn’t always have to happen on a Friday.  Let me explain – Fridays are typically characterized by a lax schedule, a longer-than-usual lunch, a fast-moving day, and leaving early.  But this doesn’t always have to happen at the end of the work week!  Occasionally, there are those rare moments when it’s Tuesday, the day goes by faster than it typically does, and you finish all of your work by 4:30!  Or, sometimes, there are those days when you’re pretty much done, and the boss has to leave at 4 for an appointment, thus leaving no authority figure to monitor whether or not you’re actually working.  I mean, if you’re pretty much done, and it’s basically the end of the day, and he’s never going to find out…

*Note:  Yes, “Fridays” usually do happen on Friday.  However, about once or twice per month, they come into rotation on another day of the week.

Vacation Days (VD):

This is a VD that you want to have!  Obviously, these are the best of all days.  Why?  Because you’re not working and you’re getting paid.  Enough said.

*Note:  VD’s usually happen around the holidays, during the summer, or around the time of spring break.  Hahaha, take that out of context. 😛

The Different Types of Work Days: Vol. I

So over the past couple of years, I’ve been taking note of the various types of work days that I encounter.  And, after charting them carefully and making copious mental notes, I’ve developed a way to identify each kind of work day and its defining characteristics.  This is volume I of the Different Types of Work Days Handbook.  Volume I consists of the most annoying types of work days and their frequency in occurring at your workplace.  This section lets you know when you can expect these pain-in-the-butt days so that you can mentally prepare for them.  Or call in sick.

Basically an Average Day (BAD):

BAD’s are pretty standard.  You have a decent amount of work – not too much, not too little.  Maybe you have a conference call or two, but you’re definitely not booked in meetings for the day.  You actually have enough time to eat lunch – and don’t have to work through it.  You can probably even spare 15 minutes to take an afternoon break.  All in all, this makes for a pretty tolerable, uneventful, okay day. 

*Note that BAD’s don’t occur too often – when they do, they are most frequently seen occurring on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Slow, Torturous Day (STD):

STD’s are awful.  You come to the office in the morning, turn on your laptop, and check your e-mail, waiting for a barrage of notes to respond to.  Unfortunately, you have about three e-mails – two that you were cc’ed on but don’t have to respond to, and one telling you how someone wants to be in your professional network on LinkedIn.  10:30 rolls around, and you’ve totally finished all of your work for the day.  You can’t even get a head start on anything because getting a head start requires actually having work to do.  Which you don’t.  You go on non-work-related websites, check some news sites, take your turns on the Facebook Scrabble app, and find yourself wishing that someone would send you an invite to a two-hour meeting.  It’s that bad.  The high point of your day is lunch – when you actually have something to do (i.e., eat).  The rest of the afternoon pretty much consists of you going on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube about 20 times an hour, just to find out that none of your friends has updated at anything, most likely because they actually have work to do at work.

*Note that these days don’t mean you’re lazy, because with STD’s, you legitimately have nothing to do.  STD’s occur once or twice a week, on average.  Tuesday-Thursday are the most likely times for you to have an STD.

Doing A lot of Meaningless Nothing (DAMN):

DAMN’s are the polar opposites of STD’s.  You come into the office expecting to have five e-mails from the night before, and realize that you have 30.  And lucky for you, about 28 of these e-mails have to-do items in them.  Most of your action items outlined in these e-mails are totally pointless and tedious, but still, you have to have all of them done by the end of the day.  You also have four or five meetings that you have to present in.  DAMN’s usually don’t leave you any time for lunch – if you’re lucky, you can eat while you’re sending e-mails, updating spreadsheets, and making slide decks.  The afternoon consists of you frantically trying to finish all of your to-do’s so that you might leave at a reasonable hour.  When you have a DAMN day, you usually don’t leave the office until at least 6:00.

*Note:  You are most likely to find yourself in a DAMN on Monday or Friday.

Conferences:  Obligatory, and Not Fun (CONF):

CONF days are usually hectic, just like a DAMN day.  When you come into work in the morning, you check your calendar, and noticed that you’re booked for the entire day!  Sometimes even double-booked for some slots.  You typically have to present some slides, or at least say something intelligent on every single meeting when a CONF day comes up.  Most likely, these are all calls pertaining to your job role and the teams and projects you work on, thus preventing you from weaseling out of at least one meeting just so you can run to the bathroom, or maybe even *gasp* have lunch.  If you’re really lucky, you have calls with people from different time zones, so your onslaught of conferences starts at 7 a.m. and goes until 6 p.m.

*CONF days usually occur in the Monday-Thursday range.

Stay tuned for Volume 2…

Corporate Word of the Week:

keynoting (v.) – This is actually a word, but it annoys me because you could never use this word outside of a business setting without someone looking at you like you’re a nut.  Why can’t you just say, “giving the keynote speech?”

ex. – The software executive guy is keynoting the Information Initiative Innovations Conference in May.

How to Get Your Boss to Lay off the Layoffs

We’ve got some seriously trying economic times upon us right now, and it seems that all of Corporate America is  atwitter talking about layoffs and reorganizations of management and all of that fun stuff that translates into you not having a job.  Even here at IBM.  Eek.

You think your job is secure – you’re a great contributor, you’re always on time, and you get your work done quickly and efficiently.  However, one day, your boss makes a trip down to your office and gives you the gut-wrenching news that you’ve been laid off.  In the case of such an event occurring, I give you a number of options for what you can do.  Note that I tend to lay on the sarcasm and dry humor quite thickly… 😉

Blame:

Blame your performance on the project leader, or on one of your coworkers.  Mention that the team leader hasn’t been effective enough, or encouraging enough.  Say that if your coworkers were more productive, then you wouldn’t be in this position.  Get your boss to focus on someone else.  Hopefully he or she will be so busy thinking about all these people responsible for your getting fired, that the boss won’t even remember to fire you.

Rat out Others:

Another option is to suggest other people on your team to be fired instead of you.  You know that Joe on the team called in sick last week when he wasn’t really sick.  Cindy always comes in late, and leaves early.  You’re pretty sure that Jack hasn’t done jack to help boost company sales.  So, why should you get fired when there are at least a dozen more worthy candidates than you?  Suggest these other fireable people to the boss.  Maybe supplement your ideas with a PowerPoint presentation (with many fun pictures and clip-art graphics), and perhaps with a handy color-coded spreadsheet.  This should help your boss to see the error in his/her decision to fire you.

Playing the Guilt Card:

Your boss is telling you that you’re about to be fired.  You feel helpless, demeaned, useless, and afraid.  but don’t worry:  you still have the guilt card to play!  Tug on the boss’ heartstrings:  ask him if he remembers the time you covered for him when he wasn’t at that budget meeting because he wanted to spend an extra day on vacation in the Bahamas.  Ask her if she remembers that time you made that amazing slide deck for the Q1 marketing plans when she didn’t feel like doing it.  Mention how the company is your life, and how you’d absolutely die if you couldn’t come to the office every day and contribute to Company X’s year-to-year growth.  By the time you’re done, the boss will probably be teary-eyed, and will offer to be laid off instead of you.  Or, your boss will at least send a severance gift basket of sorts.

Throw in Some Personal Info:

Don’t be afraid to throw in some personal problems to build your case.  Mention that you just found out that your son needs braces.  Express your fears that your house will be a victim of foreclosure.  Show your grief that you don’t know how you’ll take care of your old, ailing mother.  Feel free to stretch the truth a bit.  Embellish by throwing in the fact that a family member might have some disease, and by freaking out at the fact that you could soon be living on the streets.  This will help to cement how truly un-fireable you are.

Threaten to Sue:

This option is truly a classic.  When talking with your boss, throw in some frightening, ominous words and phrases like “discrimination,” “favoritism,” and “unequal pay.”  Say that you’re pretty sure that your coworker of the opposite sex has been approached for more important assignments than you’ve been asked to do.  Mention that you’re pretty sure that Bob on the team gets more pay than you for doing the same work with the same experience.  Again, add in some fluff.  Speculate.  Nothing scares Big Business more than the word “lawsuit.”  After all, let’s not forget that suing is the American Way.

Of course, if none of this works, then your final option is to apply for other jobs, try your best to cut back on personal expenses, and to hope for the best.  Hopefully being laid off is a predicament that both you and I won’t be facing personally.  But, if you find yourself in that situation, remember that you have my “expert” help here in this blog post, as well as your own marketable skills and talent.  Moreso the latter.  😛

Corporate Word of the Week:

performant (adj.) – A business word typically used when one means “high-performance,” or “top-performing.”  Note that this word does not actually exist.

ex. – These software products are the performant technologies for the overarching brand.

The Coworker Identification Guide

So in my almost 2 years (has it been that long already?!) with IBM, I’ve met a few, um, characters, shall we say.  And, in speaking with my friends and family regarding their own jobs, it seems as if there are a few kinds of archetypal workfolk who seem to exist at every workplace.

A few varieties of people that I’ve observed in their native work habitats include:

That Loud Person:

There is at least one of these types everywhere.  You know – that guy / woman whose speaking volume is that of your average person with a megaphone cranked up to high.  They’re always on conference calls, always have the door wide open, and always seem oblivious to the fact that there are other people who can hear every word of their conersations.  Note that these people typically do not shut the door, lower their voices, or take their phones off speaker, even while talking about sensitive subjects such as personal relationships, layoffs, stock prices, and their children. 

If you find yourself on a conference call with these types of office dwellers, you typically have to hit the volume-lowering button on your phone approximately ten times in order to prevent severe and permanent damage to the eardrum.  In some cases, That Loud Person is also known to emit an unnatural-sounding, annoying laugh that sounds hyena-esque.

That Middle-Aged Person Who Refuses to Embrace New Ideas:

That Middle-Aged Person refuses to see why social networking is relevant to the corporate setting, despite your attempts to show them that businesses are increasingly utilizing social media.  For some strange reason, this person doesn’t seem to compute that social marketing follows the exact same principles as traditional marketing.  It’s just the whole newfangled “online” aspect of everything that seems to throw them off.  They also tend to assume that simple software, such as PowerPoint and Excel, is too difficult to use, and quickly dismiss these tools as useless.  This workperson might also be seen getting upset that younger people are getting promoted ahead of him or her.  Most times, simply learning about Facebook and PowerPoint slides could fix this problem.  Researchers are baffled as to why That Middle-Aged Person doesn’t do just that.

The Credit Stealer:

So someone on your team, maybe even the team leader, tells you that he or she is updating the boss on what the team is working on.  The person then asks you for a list of the things you’ve accomplished.  You jump at this opportunity to make yourself look good, and send the person all the important things you’ve done, all of the ideas you’ve had, and all of the projects you’ve headed, knowing that the boss, or maybe even the boss’ boss, is going to be looking at this report. 

Then, The Credit Stealer takes this information, as well as everyone else’s on the team, and sends it to management…and presents everything that the team has accomplished as his or her own work, rather than the team’s work.  The best is when the person doesn’t even bother to change your wording in the report.  Observations show that this person does this because (1) They’ll step on anybody to get to the top (2) They have absolutely no decent work to show for him / herself. 

That Dude Who Never Does Anything:

Even though you’re putting in extra hours, checking your e-mail at 11 p.m., and skipping lunch every other day, there’s always that person who comes in at 10 and leaves at 4:30.  That Dude Who Never Does Anything is typically seen walking from office to office with a cup of coffee in hand and making idle, and non-work-related chit-chat.  He or she also makes sure to take a 2 hour lunch, and always has a reason to leave work early.  This person also takes long vacations, and takes many a sick day without informing the higher-ups.  Experts are baffled as to why and how That Dude Who Never Does Anything doesn’t get fired.

The Continuous Conference Call Person:

It seems like there are those people who are always on the phone.  They have meeting after meeting, every day, without fail. You might ask The Continuous Conference Call Person to go get lunch in the cafeteria, but he or she will always answer, “Can’t today, I’m booked with conference calls straight through ’til 5.”  When walking by this person’s office, he or she can be spotted with feet on the desk, twiddling a pencil, phone on speaker, using big business-type words.  One thing that is very puzzling about these people:  when do they find time to do all of the work that they discuss on these conference calls?

The Gloater:

 The Gloater is also known as “The I’m-Better-Than-You Person.”  This is the guy who always makes sure to respond to your e-mails with some sort of pompous, and usually irrelevant, comment.  This annoyingness might also take place on conference calls.  This person doesn’t cite any sources for the nitpicking, other than his or her own hot air.  The Gloater always makes sure to carbon copy the boss on these sorts of e-mails, or ensures that someone from management is on the conference call, as to make you look stupider.  The Gloater usually just wastes time, and never has an actual point to make.  Outside of work, this type of person is typically referred to as, “The Know-It-All.”

The Power-Hungry Annoying Person:

A staple in every office setting.  So long as work has existed, there has always been a person in every workplace who got a taste of power, wants more, and will do anything to get more.  This person steps on others, doesn’t care whom they hurt, and yet still gets promoted for some reason.  The hunger for power is likely the only reason why this person is usually seen in a management position of some sort.  It is still being researched as to whether or not this person is actually competent in what he or she does. 

The Butt Kisser:

So long as there’s a Power-Hungry Annoying Person, there’s always someone to kiss his or her rear-end.  This common office-type is also known as “The Brown Noser,” or, “The Yes Man.”  These invertebrates will go out of their way to compliment the boss, and will take on any project the boss hands them.  They always have a smile on their face, and never protest that they have too much work.  Because they never put up a fight, these people-pleasers usually find themselves getting stepped on, and are rarely promoted, despite the fact that they willingly do large amounts of work.

Hopefully this guide will help you to identify the many species of workers who dwell in your office building.  Note that there are still some unidentified types out there, and hybrids who possess characteristics of more than one species.  Also, be sure to keep a watchful eye out for the ever-so-rare “Normal Coworker.”  Count yourself lucky if you spot one of these breeds.