Flying Oskar: The Layoff

I’d heard stories about layoffs before, stories about people being led into a room with no warning one Friday and being told that their services would no longer be required. I’d heard stories about somber-faced human resources managers delivering the sort of news that every person dreads with efficiency and calculated compassion, with lots of platitudes about markets and empty gratitude for years of faithful service. I’d heard about how the choreographed efficiency of the whole thing tended to give it an air of surreal detachment, almost like what had happened hadn’t exactly happened to you.

I’d heard all those stories. Prior to last Thursday morning though, I’d never actually felt what it was like to lose my job that way.

Up until Thursday, I was an employee of Trelleborg working at their Coated Systems plant off of Highway 29 in the area of Spartanburg County just past the westside Target. I ran a machine that spread liquefied rubber over a textile carcass to make blankets for use in printing presses. It wasn’t the sort of job that anyone tells their first grade teacher they want to do when they grow up, but it paid pretty well, and enabled me to do my part towards providing my family with a decent existence. For that alone I was grateful to have the work, and while I’m not to the point where I’m fearful for the future of the people who’ve depended on me, uncertainty over it all is my constant companion these days.

The week started with very little indication of what was coming. There had been a few ominous rumors about layoffs, and everyone knew that business had been slow, but rumors are tricky things in a manufacturing plant. When people work 12 hours on the night shift, there are bound to be things that get made up and passed around out of nothing but boredom. Ideas get bandied about, and one person’s idle speculation gets turned into ironclad truth by the person who hears it.

Before long, every idea from complete plant closure to temporary selective layoffs had someone advancing it. I decided to take a wait-and-see approach to things. Deep down I knew that whatever was being planned wasn’t going to be known by any of us until the exact moment they wanted us to know.

Wednesday evening at 7 o’clock, those of us just showing up for our last night shift of the week got word that there was going to be a mandatory plant-wide meeting at seven the next morning. Everybody was buzzing about it, but nobody had the slightest idea what exactly this plant-wide meeting was about; just more speculation, nervous jokes, and hope. The night went by like any other, and as 7 a.m. was approaching, a palpable anxiety set in.

Around ten minutes till, everyone started filing into the “employee training room.” The room itself has about 40 chairs or so, which eventually left a little better than half the people in attendance standing. In the front of the room is a table with a laptop computer connected to a projector. Our human resources director was standing in front of the laptop getting everything set up. While we were waiting for everyone from the day shift to get there, people started cracking small jokes just to break the tension, but glancing around at the faces in the room, I didn’t see anyone smiling. The gravity of the situation was starting to set in.

After everyone arrived, the director of Trelleborg’s North American operations walked in the door. He walked up to the table in the front of the room, picked up a piece of paper, and began to read. I don’t remember exactly what was said, but I do remember it was a lot of corporate jargon about “market conditions” and “difficult economic times” eventually punctuated with the only useful fact in his reading of this meandering corporate memo: A significant number of us were going to lose our jobs that day.

I found myself wondering in the middle of all this exactly how hard these economic times had been on this guy. It’s tough being lectured about “markets” by a guy who will climb in his bed that night still employed, and not just employed, but also making far more than anyone else in the room.

Still, his wasn’t an enviable task, and he obviously wasn’t enjoying it. He barely looked up from his prepared remarks and even after he was finished reading, he kept his head down trying not to make eye contact with anyone. I can’t be sure, but I read his guilt as sincere. He looked as though he believed this thing had an inertia that he couldn’t stop, as though it were a storm blowing through, and he was just trying to hold on. Maybe he was right to feel that way. The decision was almost certainly made back at Trelleborg’s corporate headquarters in Sweden, but how much input he had in that decision only he could say. Whether or not he was just Pontius Pilate washing his hands, I’m honestly not quite sure.

Once he was done telling us the broad overview, he turned things over to the human resources manager to handle the particulars. She picked up a list and started to go though departments, letting those who weren’t going to be affected by the layoffs leave. When she’d whittled down the crowd a bit, she got to the departments that were going to be affected. Then she picked up another list and started reading names. After she’d read the names, she told those people to leave. They still had their jobs. The rest of us, we’re told, were going to be placed on permanent layoff. The air seems to have gotten sucked out of the room. About 40 people lost their jobs that day.

While the HR manager passed out information about the particulars of our firings, I took a look around at the faces in the room. Some of these people had been working for the company longer than I’ve been alive. The looks on their faces told me that they literally didn’t know anything else, and as bad as it all was for me, I couldn’t imagine what it must’ve been like for them. What does it feel like to lose the only job you’ve ever had in your adult life? There aren’t any statistics for that.

After all the pertinent information had been explained, the HR manager thanked us all for our years of service. It was an empty gesture, the kind of thank you you’d get from someone running a drive-thru window when you pick up your cheeseburger, and I winced a little when she said it. Finally, we were told that our department supervisors would need to escort us to our lockers so we could turn in all our tools, and then escort us out of the building. It was the ultimate humiliation; we freshly fired employees, were being treated like thieves.

I almost balked at the suggestion, but decided that making a scene probably wouldn’t help me or anybody else in that situation so I just sucked it up, and made my way to my locker with my supervisor. I unlocked my locker, and left the door open so that someone could come along later to get my tools. Once everyone had gotten what needed to be taken home and left what didn’t, we walked towards the parking lot for the last time.

I told my supervisor on the way out how humiliating it was to have to be escorted out of the plant like some potential criminal. He agreed with me of course, but what was he supposed to do? He was caught up in this just like anyone else, just another cog in this horrible corporate machine. When we got to the door I turned towards him, shook his hand, and made my way towards the car.