Chapter 4

Our marriage had never been better. Even the world around us seemed better. The summer weather was great for once and on top of everything we were going to have our holidays shortly. We were mainly to stay at home but we had booked a short trip to Berlin by bus. It was cheap and with the mortgage on the house to be paid we had to be careful about our spending.

It was two weeks after the wonderful Saturday night and one week before our holidays began. We had our weekly group meeting at work. I was in the post-sales support group, which meant that I was helping the customers with the installation and necessary customisation of our packaging machines. I had been in the department for close to two years, ever since I finished my apprenticeship as an electronics technician.

There were six of us in the group, five technicians working in different fields, and a section manager. This Monday we were probably going to discuss the same thing we had discussed over and over again the last five months: the new case-handling system. It had cost a fortune and was meant to help us in our daily work, but the effect was the opposite. The system was flawed, and despite our computer department's best efforts, the system still didn't perform like it was supposed to. It was a standard system, customised by our computer department, and there was a constant battle between the supplier and our people as to who was to blame for the errors and lack of performance.

We had just started the meeting when our section manager, Daniel, was call to the department manager's office. We postponed the meeting and went about our business. I was in and out of the office all the time and I didn't notice that John, one of my older colleagues, had left until he returned. He came through the door walking like a sleepwalker with a strange, expressionless look on his face. Normally he moved faster and although he was a quiet guy, he was usually smiling. Carl, one of my other colleagues, had noticed the difference, too.

"Hey, what's up?" he asked.

"I've been fired," John answered.

His voice was monotone. He sat down in his chair and began to open the drawers in his desk, taking out his things and putting them in a plastic bag.

"Daniel has been fired, too," he continued.

"What!" Carl said. "Come on. You must be joking. What are you talking about? Fired?"

Everything about John told me that it was no joke. It was unreal. They couldn't fire John or Daniel. Where would they go to get a new job? This was the only factory in our little town; no other jobs were to be found within a hundred miles or so, unless you were extremely lucky or wanted to be a farmhand or fisherman. Besides, the company was doing fine and making a good profit every year. We had plenty of work.

"Did they just tell you to go pack your things? I mean, why did they... ?" I asked.

"They said they were expecting a stagnation in the market. You will all be called to the lunchroom later for a briefing."

John got up, took his plastic bag and walked mechanically out of the office.

We were in a state of shock. Carl was furious.

"A stagnation! What the hell are they talking about? We have plenty of orders and thanks to that wonderful system we can hardly keep up. How are we going to do our fucking jobs with fewer people?"

"Like we always have to do: work harder for the same pay," Peter answered.

Peter had been in the company forever and he was a pessimistic and cynical bloke. Carl was about to say something about leaving but Peter interrupted him.

"Where will you go? You can either commute for three or four hours a day, minimum, or you can move. You think you can sell your house at a price that will allow you to buy one in the city?"

We discussed the situation until we were called to the meeting John had mentioned. Here, we got a vague explanation about unexpected competition from some Asian companies, but the more the head of personal said, the more absurd it sounded. From the questions that some of the others asked it began to dawn on me what the real reason was. Somebody, probably the department manager, had promised the board that the new computer system would make us more efficient, meaning that fewer people could do the job. Since the system had already cost a lot more than predicted, the department manager was out to save his own skin, proving that the savings on personnel he had promised the board were real.

We got one new piece of information: Our group was merged with the technical support people. We were still to handle post-sale support, but also ordinary maintenance. We could do the job, no doubt about that. The problem was that the rest of the technical staff knew little about the tasks we normally handled. Just to add to the expected shortage of manpower, three people had been fired in the technical support department. "Rationalisation", they called it. By merging the two groups we could achieve "synergy" and work more "dynamically". We wouldn't have to sit around and "wait for work" in our separate groups. I guess the theory was fine, but sitting around waiting for something to do was an unfamiliar situation.

The changes were to be carried out immediately, meaning the next day. The company had given the people who had been laid off a generous extra month's pay and they didn't even need to show up at work. That announcement was met by a wall of silence. What did they expect, standing ovations?

The technical support group was twelve people, excluding the three people fired. We were only four, so we moved into their offices. We had a meeting with our new section manager and he was even more frustrated than we were, but he couldn't discuss it with us. He was caught between a rock and a hard place. All he said was that it had been either him or Daniel, and Daniel had apparently pulled the shortest straw. We were told to move into our new offices the following day.

The last four days before my holidays passed in a daze. We did our jobs routinely but there was little enthusiasm left. When Friday finally arrived I needed a holiday more than I had ever needed one before. Lisa was naturally shocked as well, but she was relieved that it was John and not me who had been sacked. I couldn't see it that way. John was a friend and he had a family to support. It was going to be harder for him to get a job than it would have been for me, considering that he was close to fifty. Lisa understood, but we decided not to spoil our holidays talking about it. I needed to get my thoughts away from work and relax.