Sizing up

Hey. It has been one of those weeks - up and down at the best of times, in steady decline at the worst. Last Monday was incredibly productive, then Tuesday was not, due to the Melbourne Cup. Most people spent a great deal of time discussing their bets and their sweep picks. For the record, my horse came fourth. This is incredibly disappointing considering that I usually pick second and get some money from it, but what can you do? The answer is: make sure you eat and drink enough to cover your losses.

Some others bet big on the top four, any order (I don't know what that's called) in a collective pool that ended up being over $1000. They stood to win $200 000 but missed out by one horse, which made the whole of Wednesday rather dour. I was in a pensive mood because I went straight from parading my cool hat and taking photos to playing poker with Paul, Daniel, Ben, Melissa, Ian and Corkie. I lost another $10. Quite early on, actually, to Ben's aggressive play. It just sucked because I had decent cards but he happened to have better cards. Tis okay, Corkie cleaned him out not long after with a timely full house.

Yeh, but I was tanked and I went home tanked and I took Corkie home for dinner (my sister was over, cooking) and Sir, Rach and Corkie laughed at me all night for being tanked. I also managed to convince myself it was a good idea to change my desktop to a close up of Ben's face (taken by Clint when he stole my camera, before you ask) and then got a shock in the morning when I booted up my computer. Needless to say the desktop has changed back to the default Apocalyptica (Reflections) background that I've had pretty much the whole time I've had Drew.

Anyway, on Thursday I was feeling oddly procrastinatey. I woke up on time and ate breakfast, but then for some unknown reason somehow it got later than I realised and then I thought it would be a good idea to have second breakfast (like a hobbit) while I was at it, seeing as I was late already... I had a large travel mug of plunger coffee in one hand and a bouquet of green bags in the other for grocery shopping and started skipping down the stairs from the station to the inaudible tune of 'Nothing' by The Cat Empire (Sir and I will be off to see them on Saturday). I rocked in at 9:45am, which isn't too bad in the scheme of things, but certainly much, much later than I've ever been before and unusual for yours truly.

Crownie thought it was hilarious that I'd stayed home to eat second breakfast and she started entertaining the idea as well. My flatmate cackled at me via email when I told her not to make any jokes about ents. In my lunch break I went grocery shopping with Corkie in tow but when we returned we seemed to have walked in on a mood shift.

Eventually we found out that there were a bunch of people being dragged into the boardroom one by one and the reason they were being dragged in was because they were being made redundant. I got a bit weirded out. Like, how would I know whether I'd be the next one in? It eventuated that the people in the meetings had had an email sent to them earlier in the morning. Corkie was one of them. She panicked. I told her that they may be cutting her pay or something, it may not be the worst case scenario. After all, she'd already had a review that went well so she was okay, right?

Wrong. She marched in there and told the CEO straight off not to feed her bullshit and then got given her marching orders. Others to fall: Heidi and Lauren (expected), Graeme, Kevin, Nicole and Colin. From the media department, not so many because they happened to have two resignations, but Imad, Chennie and the new boy, Lindsay (who I quite like) are to be let go. An understatement to say that no work got done that afternoon.

They were given the rest of the day off and most of them went to the pub. I tried to talk to Corkie but she was so angry that she stormed out. The rest of us were trying to piece together the carnage for the rest of the afternoon. Our CEO came around and spoke to the rest of us, spinning such bullshit as "It was in no way a reflection on their work and it was a very difficult decision but we were told by the board of directors to cut costs by a third so we had to let some staff go".

Pfft. Corkie later told me that he had said "not to take it personally". As Corkie pointed out, such a coincidence that the people they decided to 'let go' were people they thought would go quietly, that they thought would just lay down and take it like a doormat. My question was - if it was no reflection on their work and nothing personal, then what the hell was it??? How do I know I'm safe if the only thing I have to go on is Phaedon's word and Phaedon's word is managerspeak? Aaargh!

So Friday was a pretty sombre day, even without the missing people (they have four weeks to finish up but, as you can imagine, most of them decided to take the day off). There was a brief mention of the redundancies at the company meeting, but that was insensitively followed by our managing director talking about how well the focus groups have responded to the product (ie, we're going to be rich!), how they are in talks with a big telco (ie we're going to be rich!) and suggestions for the Christmas party (ie we're going to act rich!). At the pub we dissected the whole ordeal but then I had to go to dinner with my family because it was my sister's birthday.

The rest of the weekend was spent traipsing to North Sydney post office to get my package, only to find that it was closed on weekends (I mean, how else am I going to get it?), paying a brief visit to Corkie, who was still angry, but at least willing to talk and then going to a talk by Dzogchen Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist who spoke on 'The Suffering of Change'. And the Newtown Festival with Corkie, Crownie and my sister to see CODA play. And a predictable splurge on the market stalls therein.

Today was productive. I am sizing up Phaedon for a chat. I just want to find out whether he knows how much the redundancies have affected the rest of the company and how little anyone trusts management (which was the case before the redundancies but threefold now). Anyway, I also need a waiver for them to say that I can freelance, though I really don't think that they will care if I just go ahead and do it. If they find out, what are they going to do? Fire me?