Too close to home

I know it’s been a while, but there was a whole series of events that completely took the wind out of my blogging sails. There has been much to write about, but I have not had the time, energy and/or desire to sit down and start blogging.

The most recent escapade is our ice storm adventures. I’ll get to that in a subsequent post.

But it started back on Dec. 4, when things began to hit the fan at work. I don’t usually write about work too much and I don’t plan to make a habit out of it, but this one is hard to avoid.

Late in the day that Thursday was when word first started getting out that we were going to be facing layoffs. I didn’t find out about it myself at that point, although it was apparent something was up and I had my suspicions.

Those suspicions were confirmed the next morning when I sat down to check my morning RSS feeds and saw the headline on timesunion.com – “WNYT to reduce work force.”

Anyone who knows anything about the media business – or just the economy in general – had to know this was coming. The question now was who was getting the ax? The TU story didn’t say much. It was a very nerve-wracking drive to work that morning.

As I said before, most people had to expect that the industry troubles would catch up to us eventually. I just didn’t expect the cuts to go so deep. Over the next several days we said goodbye to 17 co-workers (an 18th person accepted an offer to become part-time).

My job was safe, but it was still very hard to see what was happening to friends and colleagues. I understand some of the business decisions, but that didn’t take any of the sting out of it. Everyone has their own story – families at home, babies on the way, many of the workers had been there for a decade or more. We soldiered on tried to keep doing our work as person after person filed out past us. Tears were shed, but somehow the job still got done.

And it still is getting done. Those of us fortunate to be left behind are adjusting to “the new normal” – figuring out how to do more with less.

As for those laid off, each and every one of them is loaded with talent. It is my sincerest hope that they all land on their feet and find something even better than what they had before.