I've just endured the hardest month of my professional career, and for what? Most definitely not the paycheck, its woefully inadequate, all I can say is that the experience has fundamentally altered the way I look at life.
The firm I work for took over the management of a failed company. The employees hadn't been paid since Dec. We laid off 127 people and it didn't make the news, we're not as sexy as Zain, no press conference, no hype, just cold hard termination letters oozing complex legal terms designed to shield us from liability. We retained a few senior managers and here they are working every day putting in the crazy hours companies in that industry demand.
I wondered why they even bothered, until I realised they truly love what they do. The fact that they are in a less than ideal situation, no pay, industry veterans in their fifties suddenly answerable to some fresh-faced 25 year old from a little known company and yet, they're OK, they come in to work , every day, to an office they used to rule , sit down and get to work, huddle up around the water cooler at 10 and trade war stories, "remember when the GM did..." , " remember the time the auctioneers took the Deputy GMs S-Class", they laugh off a situation which I cannot imagine happening to me, a situation that has happened to people around me.
I know people who have lost their Jobs for no clear reason, or for reasons they couldn't control, and each time I think "What if it was me?" and I start making a plan B.
A week later I'm back to my bad old habits, depleting my savings at an alarming rate as I enjoy my youth. I guess what I'm trying to say is we all need to have a plan B, we need to allow our minds to consider the bad as well as the good things we expect from the future. While we plan our MBAs, moving out of mums house, our push to get that promotion, start that company, buy that car, marry that girl, we should also consider the possibility that things may not go as planned, and make contingencies with the same urgency we reserve for the good things we want in life
rK out.
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I've gone through retrenchment as well, and I can tell you it is a nasty experience. Especially when you know you are more qualified and skilled than those who are left behind.
ReplyDeleteBut looking at it positively, that was the best thing to happen to me. I would have never had the guts to make the necessary and way overdue changes in my life.
That experience made me realize a truth...that the only constant in life is change itself.
So have that plan B, plan C and plan D....and never waste time pursuing someone else's dream and ambitions, as noble as hey may be. For if they are not your own, you risk waking up one day with a pang of regret over a life wasted.
Man just reading that post I realize how real the possibility of being made redundant or retrenched is. Just the other day the company I work for announced that their are going to be 1200 jobs cut. Luckily our section has been temporarily saved as they came up with a way of saving money basically by cutting the number of hours we all work.
ReplyDeleteIt made me realize just how crucial is it to have that backup plan coz u just never know when life is gonna turn around and slap you in the face..