Peripatetic Meanderings

Much excitement is afoot, my friends. I have the Horsetooth 10K swimming race a week from Sunday, but we'll talk about that later. For the moment, the front-page discussion topics include a potentially personal application of the WARN Act, some opportunities behind the camera, and some thoughts about this unusual summer.

Let us begin with a brief discussion of economic issues, shall we? The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act is a government attempt to protect workers by requiring employers to provide more than two weeks notice when planning to lay off more than 50 workers. And since our company has already laid off several hundred people, the Act is already in effect for us. So, Monday morning after our regular staff meeting, the boss asked all the editors to stick around for an additional, um, conversation.

We've known it was coming. Most of our department's business has come from supporting new business proposals, and there just haven't been a whole lot of those lately. And the sporadic Program work that flows into the department between proposals typically does not require editors. Ergo, we've had several people sitting around collecting paychecks without contributing anything to the company's bottom line for some time now. And when that situation appears to have become a chronic condition, well, heads have to roll.

The question is, whose heads?

According to the boss, we've all got our necks firmly inserted into the guillotine. The Director will decide how many of us need to go, and then the HR Department will apply some sort of mystic legal formula to determine for whom the blade descends. We're supposed to receive notification on August 28th.

The details of the HR formula are shrouded in mystery, protected like the recipe to Diet Coke. This "black box" calculation supposedly provides a completely objective system that factors in such data as seniority, security clearances, performance ratings, and who knows -- astrological signs? -- in such a way that any layoffs become completely impervious to lawsuits. If the HR spreadsheet says you're out, well then, you pack up your nameplate, acrylic paperweights, and family photos...and head for the door. Do not pass GO, do not slander or sabotage the coworkers who remain, and please, please do not soil your own dignity by getting on your knees and begging for mercy. There shall be none.

The problem with such an objective system is that it doesn't do a very good job of discerning which employees have the most potential to contribute in the future, and would therefore be the ones to hold onto. I'm not saying it has happened in our department, but sometimes a group might contain a few, um, inflexible individuals who may have contributed greatly in the past, but are still stuck back there in antiquity, and have thus become a detriment to future progress. This layoff process may indeed avoid litigation, but it doesn't necessarily contribute to the greater good. (I'm not necessarily saying that's the case here, though.)

Anyway, since the formula is secret, it doesn't help the at-risk employees calculate their chances of remaining employed. I guess that's not really a very big deal because we'll find out soon enough, but it's still not a comforting place to be.

There's no point in getting too nervous. Thanks to the WARN Act, we'll have 60 days before we're actually ushered out the door. And besides, I think everyone would agree that I'm simply too good looking to get laid off, regardless of any HR formula.

(cough)

Well, OK, maybe I should get nervous. Or at the very least, should get my résumé up to date.

But here's the good news: I've been doing a lot more work with the Digital Media Services group lately. (DMS is just fancy talk for "the Video Guys".) I've been helping out with webcasts, filling in as a cameraman on occasion, and have even been assigned to do a couple of solo video shoots.

The first one was an assignment to shoot a talk given by four of the astronauts from the latest Hubble Telescope repair mission. Real live astonauts! That's pretty cool. My job was simply to point the camera to capture something to edit in with the mission video they provided, so I was able to push "Record", and then just relax and enjoy their presentation. They were fun to listen to, and their commentary about the mission was delightfully educational. I know we all pretty much take it for granted these days, but the fact remains that flying in outer space is still a completely amazing thing for humans to do.

My next assignment was to videotape a seminar where a bunch of retired Propulsion Engineers talked about "Lessons Learned" from the early days of playing with (er, I mean designing) rockets. They were an interesting collection of coots, with abundant wisdom and intriguing tales of hydrazine-propelled glory. But I can sum up the four hours of talking points and PowerPoint slides into four simple words: "Rocket fuel is dangerous!"

But seriously, do guys in the aerospace business ever get bored with talking about explosions? I doubt it. It was fun to point the camera at them and record it all. Now all I have to do is edit in their slides and then distribute the program to all interested parties.

I will make this observation, though -- the Denver Convention Center is a HUGE place! Especially if you're carrying a ton of video gear and wandering around in circles because you have no idea how to navigate the maze between the parking garage and the seminar suites. If I weren't blessed with my Schwartzneggerian physique, I'd have been one tired puppy after toting my equipment over so many arduous miles of corridors and stairwells. Fortunately, I was given a lunch pass, and feasted on a sandwich that had been mumified in cellophane some unknown number of days previously, a bag of chips, and one of those frisbee-sized cookies that're so full of caloric goodness that it bends like a Dali watch when you try to eat 'em. Yummmm!

The company trade show booth was giving away chapstick, too. They even had a contest for attendees to guess which three ingredients were combined to give it its unique flavor -- which seemed an odd thing for an aerospace company promotion, but was fun nonetheless. I guessed "pickle", "mahi mahi", and "Leo Sayer"; which was apparently incorrect. I never did learn the winning answers, but I can always use chapstick. (I hate to admit it, but I've been addicted since I was 12. Heroin and crack are nothing compared to lip balm, man.)

As for the "thoughts about summer" I promised to share with you, I'll keep it short. As regular readers know already, I blame ALL climatological problems on human behavior; specifically, the behavior of Mr. Albert Arnold Gore, Jr.

I have missed numerous afternoon swims at the lake because of thunderstorms that have rolled in just as I was getting ready to wiggle into my Speedo. I expect this sort of thing in May, and even into early June. But c'mon, people, it's August now, and we're supposed to be parched at this point. I expect the sky to remain a deathly searing blue, completely void of clouds and empty of rumbling. It's unsettling enough to have the threat of layoff hanging over one's head, but an entirely different level of unease to be seeing lush green grass, colorful flowers, and massive overhead stratocumuli at this time of year. Can the apocalypse be far behind?

I'll let you know as soon as I find out. In the mean time, stay cool, and have a great day!