THE EXPERIMENT and its last ugly turn

Last week on Thursday the cubemate asked me if I wanted to get coffee. This is code for "lets talk about something secret". The cubemate told me that next week would be the end of his term. He was getting fired. Skeptical, I demanded evidence.

The cubemate had it all thought out. He'd made an erroneous error before passover and hadn't been called up on it even though everyone was mad. They only get mad at people who are in. When you're out, they don't care so much. Also, The Snake had sent him an email which only contained a screen capture of another one of his errors. And The Scientist had added him to Linked In.
He was out.

All day Thursday he nervously preceeded each phonecall with "It's THE CALL".

We got through Thursday and concluded that they would do it on Sunday.

On Sunday he was much calmer. He was already tasting life on the outside. Again, all day he was disappointed when he answered THE CALL and it was only The Co-ordinator.

I went home as usual. At 4.45 there was an invitation to a meeting at 9.30 the following morning. The title: "updates".

In big corporations, "updates" is code for someone got fired/some shit is going down. If you haven't been fired before the meeting, you're ok. Most of the time, of course.

The next morning, no-one is doing any work. Everyone is huddled around in threes and fours discussing "updates". No-one knows of anyone who was fired. It must affect us all. At 9.10 I get a call from a former employee who was apparantly-accidentally sent an email by The Scientist saying that he was fired. So maybe it doesn't affect us all. The Scitentist's salary alone could save the division! In the toilets there's a whole bunch of women discussing the 9.30.

In the meeting, we are wooed by our charismatic leader and the gum-chewing nutjob from Canada. Difficult market blah blah, affected by the recession blah blah, not the core focus of company strategy blah blah, tried everything we could blah blah, but left with no alternatives blah blah, closing the division. Lots of people ask questions pertaining to the "tried everything we could" part. We are reminded to come to work on Thursday. And to keep it quiet. Oops. I've already sms'd a live feed and have people in england who know about it by now.

The aftershock: everyone who had drunk the koolaid* is flabbergasted. How can this be? What went so wrong? After 29 years here, WHAT are they going to do now???

Not me though, I'm alright. I've been fantasing about this for months! I'll be able to do all the things I've been putting off for years. And get a base-tan, tan-tan, and an after-tan. And I can't WAIT to blog about the Israeli unemployment office!

Best of all, I'm free of the EXPERIMENT. I can go and join a new one. But first, lazy summer days at the beach.


*It has come to my attention that not everyone if familiar with this expression. If you're not, use the comments.