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Un-Farewell
by Tyde

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An index finger swirling over the surface of the table in front of me. The distant ding of an elevator arriving at it’s destination. A rhythmic clunking of the photocopier down the hall. The buzz of the radio that is tuned half a point from the proper station. The chair in which I sit is comfortable; the atmosphere in which I exist is tense and unfamiliar.

Mass redundancy.

I say the words over and over in my head, but the more I hear it the less it is absorbed. I’ve watched this division develop, I saw it when it started, and now it’s been cut off by a board of people that don’t even know us. They cite budget cuts and the world market as a reason, but I think it’s just because they hate us. We were the division no one really knew existed. We were the ones that were constantly struggling to keep our head over water...not with the budget but with the levels of respect we stood to gain from the directors and so forth. I never really felt that we achieved that.

They head hunted the director of the division, years ago when he was at a rival company, they wanted him to come here to set up this business line for the company. He came here with an assistant in tow and a few salespeople. I joined a little while later, I was just a junior, typing and phone answering were my main job criteria.

I progressed slowly, I didn’t want to go any further really, happy to be a secretary, happy to not be responsible. In the past five years I’ve seen a lot pass through these doors. No one ever seemed to want to stay for long. It was better though when the director was here...this was his baby and he nurtured it. They didn’t expect us to make a profit until our fourth year, we made one in our second. We were strong and other companies saw us as a market leader – we had established ourselves and we weren’t going away. But our company never seemed to latch onto that.

The director retired last year, he wanted to get out of this, try something new. It’s my belief that the spirit of the division went with him. Without his smile and his people person skills with our clients it just wasn’t the same. I miss him. I miss him on different levels. He was a great champion of me, he was always telling everyone how wonderful I was and securing me pay rises. Money wasn’t the most important thing, it was that he believed in me...he wanted me to be noticed for my efforts.

I don’t mind the new director. He just isn’t a people person. There are several things to blame for the division’s downfall. I am loathe to blame him, but he is most certainly a part of it. He was in charge of bringing in the new business and clients still saw him as being the right hand man of the old director and not a director in his own right. I feel sorry for him as he is the one having to deliver the bad news to people. It can also be blamed on government departments not doing their job for our clients in a timely manner. We’d be on track with the budget if these projects hadn’t been paused for six months. We’d still be functioning if the government hadn’t screwed us over.

In a way I am glad. The bitching and the company hatred levels have risen dramatically in the past few months and six people have resigned this year. As the secretary I am the one they call to complain about the way the division is run, how they are never told anything, how much they hate the systems in place, how much more they could get paid in the same position at a different company. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I feel a loyalty to this company (although I abhor many parts of it now) as it was my first full time job. I grew up working for this company. Fresh out of college and slotted into a team that was strong and likable. But as time progressed you found the cracks begin to appear.

I haven’t been made redundant...not yet. The director and I are basically the only ones left. He doesn’t think we will last much longer...a few months maybe. We had two projects left to market but they are looking shaky. We don’t think our clients will want us to work for them if they can see the division disintegrating before their eyes.

As the director told me the other day “You’ve seen this department go full circle” and it’s true.

From nothing to something and back to nothing again. Maybe one day the company will decide to infiltrate this part of the market, but I won’t be here and as much as I hate to big note myself, I think they’ll fail. They don’t have the heart and soul of the division, they don’t have the guts to make it succeed.

I thought of this more than a job, a thought of it as a piece of my life. When someone does wrong by you, how can you stop yourself by wanting to do them harm back? They deserve our spite, our ridicule, our hatred. They deserve to know that we aren’t robots tuned to their frequency, we are human beings and we matter.

If they ever decided to resurrect this division I’d like to be there, standing outside of the building...to watch them go down in flames.

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THE END

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