Though the country is wall-to-wall with people Recently Made Redundant (RMR), and more are on the way to join them, there seems to be very little written by those who have gone through, and are going through redundancy.
There is this: http://blogofredundancyblog.blogspot.com/
But as the first line is:"Oh, how quick Christians are to criticize any and all Christian leaders with whom they may disagree. As defenders of truth, it is certainly understandable and I am guilty of participating in such activity myself ...."
I don't think it counts.
It's American and they're a bit strange, some of them.
Though it does sound a bit like me when I've had a few.
Anyway, here are some of my (ongoing) experiences:
Before they kick you out they have to observe procedure.
Unless you’ve been naughty and have given them an excuse to sack you (careless you) ,then they have to give you time for a consultation process.
This means that you’ll have to meet a few times with members of your management team and someone from personnel or Human Resources.
You’ll recognise them as they’ll neither be a person nor recognisably human.
They’ll be very nice to you and it will all be very jolly.
They will ask you if you have any proposals that will save your ass.
The first time I went through this we came up with some proposals:
Work was becoming scarce for the company. My fellow workers and I shared out the days that were available.
It was either that or one of us would have to go.
This resulted in cuts in our working week and salary, but it was better than the dole queue.
But this time there was no escape.
The job I had been doing for a year was delivering a Jobcentre contract but right now, with a change of government and consequent changes in policies and benefits, the Jobcentre didn’t know which way was even vaguely up.
They had stopped offering us any new clients and so our income source was gone, and our company couldn’t afford to pay their staff.
How ironic: My job was to help people keep their jobs after they’d gone back to work after being ill. If they were laying off people who were trying to keep people in work, you knew things must be pretty desperate out there.
Oh and lesson one:
Companies frequently go through periods of restructuring and waiting for funding or new contracts.
It’s important to tell the difference between what is usual: (SNAFU) and what isn’t: (FUBAR).
I worked with an old hand who said that she’d been through this process so many times and in the end things were always okay and people panicked over nothing.
It was apparent to me from early on that things weren’t going to be okay this time, but people will tell you:
“Take it from me, I’ve been here before, you won’t lose your job”
Unless that’s written down somewhere, take that advice with a pinch of salt.
Anyway…
You’ll see it coming.
(Unless you arrive at your factory on Monday morning to locked doors, the directors (currently living in apartments in Spain
Other than that sort of catastrophic failure, employers have to stick with procedures these days otherwise someone will sue their ass off.
They’re not being nice to you as they share your grief.
They simply want to avoid going to a tribunal later and get some grief of their own.
What they’re feeling is:
Phew. I’m really glad it’s that shmuck over there and not me.
Oh, and they have to give you time off to look for another job and attend interviews.
They won’t stop giving you work to do or anything, in fact the volume of work you get to do might just jump through the roof.
Management will realise that you’re not going to be there any more and so whatever work you have left undone will be thrown onto someone else. Nobody will want this work.
Nobody knows anything about your clients except you and whatever you have written in files, and most of what people know about other people isn’t written down.
Also the bosses had realised (they realised this every month or so) that there was a lot of “dead money” tied up in old cases.
It worked like this: The Jobcentre paid the company if they could get evidence that someone had kept a job for six months, so all we had to do was send someone to get a signature from a self-employed person or an employer.
Unfortunately some of these files were years old.
Mostly if you contacted one of these ex-clients after two years they’d tell you to get lost (or something with more Anglo-Saxon words in it), but the idea kept coming back to management every few weeks anyway.
They’d open a filing cabinet and see dead money. All I would see is moths and last years Christmas decorations.
So it came to pass that the Dead Money notion came back again now and we, the grunts, wore away still more of our boot leather getting even more people to tell us to bugger off.
I suspect management think that if you’ve got a date of your redundancy, you might just be tempted to put your feet up and learn a foreign language or practice your basket weaving, so they find you some stupid tasks. Like digging through files that have mice living in them.
Lesson two:
Don’t wait for them to help you find another job.
They’ll be too busy trying to keep their own job.
Things at work will get emotionally fraught towards the end.
During the last winter at work it was obvious that things were going from bad to catastrophic.
It was a severe winter, the snow and ice were deep and simply getting into work at all was a challenge but nobody wanted to be seen to be a slacker so people came in when they shouldn’t.
One of my colleagues turned her car over and she nearly died. Her boss was most concerned for thirty minutes or so.
But when someone rang in an hour later to say that the roads where she lived were too dangerous to tackle she was told bluntly to come in anyway.
Everyone wants to be seen to be: “The last one you’d want to make redundant”.
But I think that being dead is worse that being redundant.
I wrote a spoof circular and posted it in the office. Nobody dared laugh:-
Snow
Although snow is very pretty, fluffy and decorative it is also horribly dangerous and inconvenient, so, for your welfare, we have provided the following helpful guidelines to get you through this winter:
Attacks by polar bears or wolves:
If attacked by fierce arctic animals whilst on company business we recommend that you run away very quickly (in the direction of the nearest company office)
Take care not to allow any of the aforementioned animals to enter the building, (unless they have first signed in and have been allocated the appropriate visitor’s badge.)
If you cannot run to your designated office then find the nearest base and run to that one. We cannot afford to lose time simply because you have been careless enough to be chased or savagely mauled by wild beasts.
Accidents: Having an accident is a great tragedy and we are very concerned that you avoid these.
We suggest therefore that you stay off the roads and sleep in the office. We have everything here that you need, we are very nice, loving people and you can always claim any time back, which you can access after your redundancy period.
Don’t ring into the office to say that you’ve had an accident and will be late.
Road accidents, especially at high speeds take place in a fraction of a second. Therefore you shouldn’t be very late should you?
Health and Safety Guidelines
Following your accident have a good look around for a few moments
- Do you have the same number of arms as you had before?
- Do you have the same number of legs as you had before?
- Is your head pointing in the same direction as it was before? (Look down-if you see your feet you’re ok-if you can see your arse you may have a problem.)
- You may have to locate any missing limbs for future surgical re-attachment to your body. (Note: Any hospital time should be taken at weekends or using any available TOIL.)
You may ring into the office to let them know that you will be late in the following circumstances:
1. until you have fashioned some snow shoes from tennis rackets and walked back to work
2. until you have acquired enough stray dogs to haul your Wilko sledge back to work
3. From the remnants of your own, and other crashed vehicles you have built a small aircraft and flown the required distance to your office.
Frostbite:
The loss of fingers is to be avoided at all costs. You cannot enter anything on a database unless you have one or two fingers left, so think ahead and try not to compromise your efficiency. Noses may be sacrificed unless you’re required for publicity photos or you wear glasses.
In the event of you dying of hypothermia please let us know in advance that you are feeling tired and are about to lie down in a blizzard and go to sleep.
In order to conform to current traceability procedures you’ll need to tell us exactly which mound of snow you’re under so that when the spring thaw arrives we can retrieve any confidential items from you frozen body.
Information governance should not be taken lightly, even during an icy death.
Dsc/sno/22/12/10
Soon we were all summoned to head office where the ashen-faced Director addressed his troops:
“Thank you for your loyalty in the past but you should all try and leave the bunker as soon as possible as the Russians are in the woods”.
Well I think he said something like that.
The days passed. I had been given my redundancy date.
The day of my departure came.
Redundancy time.
At this time it’s very awkward at work and your workmates won’t know what to do.
It’s not like you’re retiring or going to another job.
As long as you’re there, serving out your redundancy period, you’ll be a reminder to them that they might be next, so you’ll be as popular as Banquo’s ghost wandering about with herpes and a machine gun.
None of my team had managed to find other jobs (but we had learned Hungarian and woven some neat baskets).
They bought us acres and acres of cakes for a farewell binge.
My fellow victim was on a diet and I didn’t much feel like eating.
On the other hand my boss was a lady of stout proportions and a prodigious appetite so there was some sort of method to it all I suppose.
And then we left.
After you leave work you’ll probably find your office people treat you like your wife died and that you might have killed her somehow.
You’ll not hear anything from them ever again and they’ll probably cross the street and leap into a wheelie bin if they spot you.
I did have them down as Facebook buddies but after I kept seeing their grinning faces out partying with the boss I kind of unbefriended them.
Lesson three: It’s important, if you want to keep your job, to get bladdered with the boss and plaster your grinning mugs all over Facebook in celebration of your friendship.
I never did that and, with hindsight that might have been a mistake.
Trying the Agencies
As the usual vacancies had dried up due to cutbacks I decided to try some employment agencies.
A word about Employment Agencies: horse-puckey.
I can’t really speak about how agencies work in more normal times, but in my experience, during a recession they are worse than useless.
I suppose it isn’t surprising. Employers won’t have too much trouble finding staff to fill posts when there are so many people out of work.
They aren’t likely to need an agency to fill a job now. Also they can post their vacancies on the internet and bypass any third party costs.
I’m registered with three agencies.
In the line of work that I do you need a “CRB check”.
CRB stands for Criminal Records Bureau-a CRB check informs an employer about the criminal background of a potential employee-whether they have been convicted of a criminal offence, or cautioned.
Unfortunately you need to have a new CRB done every time you get a new job or sign up with a new agency. It currently costs about £40 each time and if you register with several agencies it can run into money.
It can run into your money, as they’ll usually insist that you pay.
Historical Note: There was supposed to be something brought in to replace the CRB.
I was to be run by a new agency, the ISA.
The Independent Safeguarding Authority check was going to be valid for life. You paid £70 and that was it.
However having set up the computer systems and hired the staff (I think I even applied for a job with them) they found that they’d used up all their budget and they didn’t have any money left to run the project, so it was disbanded.
I think I was told: We had enough cash to input the data but no money was left to output the data.
You couldn’t make it up.
Unless you were Lewis Carroll.
Strike one!
The first agency I registered with was Neca Recruitment. They contacted me out of the blue the previous summer. They were very keen on having me on their books and wanted me to come and sign up with them at once. They even paid for my CRB, which is pretty unprecedented and very nice of them. I was flattered.
It seemed like I was being head-hunted.
They were very positive and full of assurances that they would be able to find me something tasty, very soon. I hadn’t started my redundancy consultation at this stage so I thought this was great timing.
Unfortunately NECA Recruitment was a new business and it was in trouble from day one.
They had started just before the recession started and all their cash flow and business planning was now out of the window.
As I sat in my office awaiting redundancy I heard my boss talking to someone. I could only hear one side of the conversation but I knew who was ringing her:
It was Craig from Neca recruitment asking if she had any vacancies.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I had been to see this guy a few weeks before and told him they were laying off staff, but he was so desperate he rang anyway. I guess he was looking to keep his job now…
Neca’s website currently carries a scant half–dozen vacancies and three of those posts are voluntary.
Strike two! :
Morgan Hunt- This agency is based in Newcastle
I registered with these guys for the first time about a year ago.
I was interviewed and they took my money for a CRB. They weren’t happy to take real folding cash and really, really wanted a cheque.
My bank doesn’t issue cheques anymore, so I only had cash or plastic. They weren’t happy and the girl looked at my banknotes like I’d just wiped my bottom with them. Hey ho.
I heard nothing for several weeks. I checked their website but there were no relevant vacancies listed in my region.
I emailed them to query this and they replied:
“We very rarely have vacancies in your field.”
Well…. I thought…. Isn’t that just dandy.
Perhaps they could have told me that before I paid for a new CRB through them?
I checked back with them two months ago, when my redundancy notice arrived, to be told that things had changed and they were now much more proactive and were hopeful about being able to offer me something.
And I’m still waiting to hear from them.
And I’m also checking out their website for vacancies.
And their website….while I’m on the subject….why on earth would they use a small pale green font on a white background?
Which species can see that? Cheetahs?
How about using a white font on a white background? That would be a proper challenge.
The third agency I tried was called Reeds, and they appeared to know what they were doing.
They kept me in their office for two hours and did offer me some sensible advice about my CV, which I adopted.
However they did say that they really couldn’t guarantee that they could find me any work.
That would be the third CRB check I needed for the third agency. I already had a CRB from work which made four.
£160 worth of wastepaper.
I declined their offer to sign up with them.
If they can’t be confident that they can find me any work, what makes them an improvement over the others I had already signed up with?
So that was:-Strike three!
Oh, and there was Ranstad care. I nearly forgot.
I had previously joined one of the companies that had amalgamated into Ranstad so I thought I’d try them next.
There were veritable whoops of joy when I first rang them. I spoke to a bloke.
He asked me what I’d done for a living, what qualifications I had.
Oh yes, I was just the sort of person they were looking for, and someone from my local office would call me.
Ten minutes later there was a woman on the phone to me saying….
“mmmmm I’m not sure but I’ll ring you back with a time to come in for an interview.”
Ten minutes and again she rings me.
“…well…having looked at your CV….we haven’t got anything in for you. At all.”
“Oh dear, and when might that change”
“Never”
“Never?”
“No, never”
“How come? The previous guy seemed very positive”
“Yes, but we mainly have vacancies for support work”
“Oh. That’s what I’ve done most of my life”
“Yes but we mainly have vacancies for Support Workers”
I look at the phone; wondering if has been magically transformed into a banana.
“But that’s what I do”
“Yes but we don’t have vacancies for the sort of support work that you do”
I think I worked out at this stage that they had vacancies for people who worked in care homes for the elderly and nothing else. Not that you’d think that after browsing their website. And not that she was about to tell me that
Ho hum:
Strike Four!
The Jobcentre.
Make friends with your Jobcentre. Find out where it is. You’ll need to.
Previously I had entered lots of Jobcentres to interview clients. I had an ID badge and a briefcase and everything.
Now I would be seeing things from the other side of the desk.
I stepped over the huddled bodies shooting up in the foyer, slithered past the phalanx of dodgy-looking security men and finally made it to one of the advisers.
Did I say one adviser?
On my last trip I got to meet four advisers.
They were all crammed into a very small side office with me and my partner.
The Jobcentre staff were being nice to us as they had managed to monumentally screw up our claim so badly that it had now been seven weeks since I had registered as out of work and we had received no payments of any kind.
Even the security man on the door said:
“Oh you’re the guy with the messed-up payments”. I was famous.
Eventually I was left with one mature lady adviser who went through the Induction for the Wageless procedure.
At one point I tried to be helpful and say:
“Well I know how bad it is to find work so I might take a course in something that might improve my chances”
At which point Mature Lady Adviser (MLA) took a sharp intake of breath and said:
“Well if you do that it may result in you being disallowed benefit entitlement.”
It was obviously a line she had delivered many, many times.
She didn’t say: “Oh what a good idea, here are some phone numbers that might help you, BUT if you take a fulltime course you might not be entitled to be considered unemployed, but then you can then do this, this and this”
The whole process seems geared to keep people out of work… forever.
The way I’m looking at it right now-I’ve plenty of time to get those things done that I didn’t have time to do before. When you’re working you’re on a treadmill that never stops you don’t have time to look at your life and change it.
People can work their entire lives at something that doesn’t help them to self-actualise, but because they’re hooked into the wage-based lifecycle then they can never stop.
But sometimes you need to stop, and right now I have. For now.
Somebody once said that today is the day you worried about yesterday.
Well, I’m at that day right now. I think you’ll survive.
And I know I will.
1 March 2011: Foraging Εxpedition
Ok-so now you cut your costs.
No more shopping at M&S for you, unless you know where they have the skip where they dump their food.
About 8.3 million tonnes of food is wasted every year, so let's do our bit to sort out the planet.
If you live in an affluent area then you're out of luck, but I don't so we have "supermarkets" and we have "frugalmarkets".
Frugalmarkets are staffed by people who couldn't pass the Asda/Walmart entrance tests.
But who, apart from a space shuttle pilot, could pass those anyway?
You know, the last time I was in Asda they were employing their assistants to hold up large cardboard fingers to point customers to checkouts that were free.
How random is that?
You know, the last time I was in Asda they were employing their assistants to hold up large cardboard fingers to point customers to checkouts that were free.
How random is that?
Hey Mr. Walmart: How about having a light that would do that instead, then the assistants could-er- "assist" people?
Sorry I got sidetracked.....so anyway we have , within a seven mile radius of me, two frugalmarkets.
Here you can find cabinets full of frozen...erm...what is this stuff, Miss?
"It's fish"
"Oh, ok...what sort of fish?"
"Does it not say on the label?"
"Hang on, sorry yes it does......Excuse me?.....Hello?.....What's a 'torsk'"
It's "cod". In Norwegian.Obviously.
I don't know how so many random items from so many different exotic locations ended up in a dodgy shop down a backstreet in Shildon, but you can end up with things that were never, ever meant to be sold here in the UK.
The downside is that a lot of these things are just weird and are actually in date, which takes half the fun out of it.
I don't know how so many random items from so many different exotic locations ended up in a dodgy shop down a backstreet in Shildon, but you can end up with things that were never, ever meant to be sold here in the UK.
The downside is that a lot of these things are just weird and are actually in date, which takes half the fun out of it.
As you go out the door there are baskets of random items, all for 10p, all way out of their sell-by dates.
Oh I love sell-by dates, don't you?
All those politicians getting manufacturers to stamp useless bits of information all over food items.
The sell-by date was introduced by Marks and Spencer in the 1970's, until then people were dying in their millions, writhing in agony clutching festering plum duff....?
Well here's a statistic for ya:
Between 1982 and 1996 UK food poisoning notifications rose from 14,000 to 83,000.
You know why that is?
People stopped smelling and inspecting their food and they started to read sell-by dates instead.
Learned helplessness. Doncha love it?
Anyway. Last time I shopped at the frugalmarket I got two full bags of shopping for six English pounds. What a pity they don't sell petrol.
Oh they did sell "Knabber-Gebackstangen" though.
I like to have at least one mystery item in my bag each time. It keeps life entertaining in the Slough of Despond I currently find myself in.
I like to have at least one mystery item in my bag each time. It keeps life entertaining in the Slough of Despond I currently find myself in.
Mystery Product of the Week: "Knabber-Gebackstangen"
Try finding a packet of these in your local M&S then.
(It's a stick covered in chocolate and muesli. Not a real stick, obviously. I aint that desperate yet.)
(It's a stick covered in chocolate and muesli. Not a real stick, obviously. I aint that desperate yet.)
3 March 2011: The Invitation
I come in and check my ansaphone.
There is a message from my ex boss to invite me to a buffet to thank me” for all the hard work I did while I was there”.
Odd, I thought:
They just gave me the push and they’re asking me to tea?
They think I did any hard work? I can’t remember that.
I asked two chums who got the push at the same time.
Well one got the push with me; the other was on maternity leave and doesn’t even know if she has a job to go back to
“Stay away” was their best suggestion.
Then I rang someone still working there and she said:
“Yes. We all think the party is an odd idea, too: we’re all waiting to hear when we’ll be made redundant and we’re invited to tea and buns”
Then she added: “You should go. The boss really likes you”
So I’ll go.
For devilment.
And to watch the manager eat some more of my cakes.
I miss that.
7 March 2011: The Signing On
Didn't look forward to this day at all. I wasn't much company being stressed out leading up to 4.00pm. My signing On Time.
Dutifully I made my way to the Jobcentre office. One particularly loopy Adviser had been pointed out to me as a sarcastic patronising cu*nt.
Naturally enough he was the one I got.
He smiled a lot and stuttered, if anything he seemed a little bit deferential.
I suspect that his wife beat him up and his dog pissed in his shoes.
Anyway, I had performed the tasks required of me to obtain my "Jobseeker's Allowance":
I had listened to his stammering speech, delivered so frequently he probably mouthed it in his sleep, I had filled in the little form that tells him how many jobs I've applied for that week, and I smiled at him to encourage him to chill a little.
And then he handed me a letter that said that I had to attend a "Back to Work" session this weekend.
Although my benefit payments were so comprehensively cocked up so that I didn't get any money at all until last week, they now regard me as a veteran with 6-9 weeks of sponging behind my belt.
So now I will get to sit with eighteen other "candidates" in a sweaty room to allow my adviser to: "Help me plan my activities and actions to find work".
I think this sounds like fun. Do we have to bring our own crayons?
Never fear, I shall keep you posted.
7 March 2011: The Signing On
Didn't look forward to this day at all. I wasn't much company being stressed out leading up to 4.00pm. My signing On Time.
Dutifully I made my way to the Jobcentre office. One particularly loopy Adviser had been pointed out to me as a sarcastic patronising cu*nt.
Naturally enough he was the one I got.
He smiled a lot and stuttered, if anything he seemed a little bit deferential.
I suspect that his wife beat him up and his dog pissed in his shoes.
Anyway, I had performed the tasks required of me to obtain my "Jobseeker's Allowance":
I had listened to his stammering speech, delivered so frequently he probably mouthed it in his sleep, I had filled in the little form that tells him how many jobs I've applied for that week, and I smiled at him to encourage him to chill a little.
And then he handed me a letter that said that I had to attend a "Back to Work" session this weekend.
Although my benefit payments were so comprehensively cocked up so that I didn't get any money at all until last week, they now regard me as a veteran with 6-9 weeks of sponging behind my belt.
So now I will get to sit with eighteen other "candidates" in a sweaty room to allow my adviser to: "Help me plan my activities and actions to find work".
I think this sounds like fun. Do we have to bring our own crayons?
Never fear, I shall keep you posted.
