Welcome back and if you came by to make a comment some of my comments get moderated but I'll get it moderated within a day unless I'm on vacation. I've got a new plugin that enables you to subscribe to comments to see if anybody comments on your comment. You'd hate for THEM to have the last word wouldn't you?
My job has changed quite a bit in the past 18 months. I was demoted from regional to area supervisor and had my workload cut along with a pay cut. I didn’t mind. I saw the changes coming and made sure I was living in a place I could afford to live and in a community where I knew a lot of people if it all hit the fan. I felt no threat to my actual job at the time.
Over the next year the staff from store manager and up has been cut by 30%. The office has been cut by over half. The store staff have had a 10% staff cut. Obviously things aren’t the same today as they were then. I feel like I’m doing a good job and doing my best for the company as far as I know how to do. That being said, there were some good people out there who aren’t there any more. I should say in the interest of full disclosure, these staff cutbacks had absolutely nothing to do with the economy at large. The company was in trouble financially and an accountant bought us and was doing triage. Every decision he’d made I agreed with in theory. In actuality it’s hard to believe how many people lost their jobs here.
I continue to work hard to do my job. I continue to believe my job is as secure today as it was in any of the previous years I’ve worked for this company. Around me people I know are being affected by lay offs and down-sizings… through no fault of their own. I’ve started feeling awkward going to birthdays and such when I’m the one still employed and everybody else has had their hours cut or been let go. I noticed it especially at a 4 year old’s birthday party and it was really awkward. His dad had just been let go. I had just gotten my biggest bonus check of the year after a really good two weeks sales increase. Not comfortable. Another friend at the party asked if we were hiring. We were and she had worked for me in the past and left on good terms to take care of her kids so we hired her back, but I can’t hire everybody.
My reaction to this has been to not blog much. The optimism I felt just last year has been replaced with a sort of hopelessness. Not about my situation so much. I’ve done everything I could think of to insulate myself from a downward turning economy. I’ve got savings and an emergency fund. I’ve got an affordable lifestyle even at a profoundly reduced pay rate if I do lose my job. I believe I could afford everything I have right now on unemployment if I had to. But when I look around me and look to see how long it’s going to last that things keep spiraling downward. I just don’t see a way out of it.
People are losing their jobs so they’re not shopping so retail stores and restaurants are closing, now those people are out of work and they’re not the wealthiest top percent, these are people barely getting by. Now they’re out of work. And they’re not spending money and the places they go are going to lose money and then they’ll lay people off. Back in the day people had double mortgages on homes. Those people are all in danger of losing their jobs and subsequently, their homes. Should they have had double mortgages? Of course not. They were insane to do it. Banks were insane to do it. Wall street was insane to buy the notes. But how do you fix it? I can’t see a way.
The part where there’s no end in sight for it all is where I’m stressed. That’s the part that makes me want to go sit in the basement with pallets of canned food and a generator and wait for the fires to go out. I have no clue what the answer is. I don’t believe the people in Washington know are care. I sincerely believe they care more about themselves than they do about fixing it so we’re not eating each other over the next winter. Those people who say “Oh. It’ll not get that bad.” I’m glad you can feel that way. Faith is a wonderful thing. I sadly for me, have very little faith in the people who are in a position to do anything to fix this. I don’t trust Washington. I don’t trust Wall Street. The people around me who I know who I do trust… we have no real power to do anything to make it stop. We’re passengers on this plane and it’s not Sully piloting it.
The Survivor Guilt by Rich Griffith, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Aloha Rich,
I often think of you when I think about the retail landscape in particular; you have been such an intuitive manager and I am always interested in hearing of your observations. It is increasingly clear that this recession will have a long-lasting effect on our habits as consumers, and I highly doubt this is “just another cycle” business people have to weather-the-storm through; those who survive it best will be those who are nimble in their responsiveness, and brave enough to reinvent themselves through some deep soul-searching about the value they offer.
As one of the ‘survivors’ you are one of those in the very best position to do just that: Identify your value, and polish it into the crystal clear, compelling clarity of vision that winning business models (and winning people) are all about. I’ve ‘listened’ to you for quite a while Rich, and you never fail to impress me with your realistic attitude, one that is without any entitlement, whining, or unproductive commiseration. You might not have the answers, but you don’t give up looking for them, and you encourage us to do so too.
This is a very painful time for so many of us, and I don’t mean to be a Pollyanna, however those who are survivors can shed the guilt, and know that they survive because they are meant to still serve in some way: They have it in them to lead. And Rich, I know you are one of those people. I have to believe that there are silver linings to these clouds, and we’ll find them.
Thank you Rosa. I can’t imagine what it’s like for the vacation/travel industry right now.
I have a file I keep of positive notes and letters and e-mails I get that I remind myself to go through when I get down. This is going in that folder.
Thanks again.