I have not flown United since November 15, 2001 - they day they laid me off (12 days prior to my becoming fully vested).
Ouch. That hurts.
That’s about as good as my layoff from a company that 90 days prior was finished printing their Red Herring, had the entire road show for going public planned and trip itinerary done, and had announced to the entire staff that the big party would be scheduled very soon in a rah-rah meeting.
400 of just over 500 were laid off. LOL.
Granted, 9/11 happened, the stock market all but halted all IPOs and the investors they’d stupidly let have a majority vote on the Board, decided they didn’t want to wait until it all rebounded and burn capital at the run rate the place needed to continue growing.
So... poof. Business plan was hunker down, keep only a skeleton crew, and toss everyone else in November of 2001. I got caught. Too expensive to keep around as an Ops guy. Oh well.
Bought my second house in August.
9/11 happens, September of course.
Managed to have my first real vacation in years booked in October and planes had just started really flying again. Weird trip.
Get back, laid off in November.
It was a lovely Christmas. LOL. Went from way more than 40 hour work weeks to sitting in my basement in my bathrobe. I probably needed a break anyway, but major life shock. With a new mortgage. Oh such fun.
The owner’s share after paying off the investors and looking for a buyer for three years, was $3M take home each. I still know both guys and my business still does some business with their next company after that one, but I’d be hard pressed to trust either one of them any further than I could throw them.
That said, they weren’t really given a choice by their other Board members. They grew it way too fast and then needed capital for the massive burn rate and painted themselves into a corner not keeping majority stakes themselves and being outvoted on their own BoD.
Dumb move. Never give control to an out of state bank. Ever. That hurt a lot of people. They didn’t intend to, just horrid timing.
A couple of years later one of their facilities had a very bad electrical system explosion from a mis-manufactured bus bar. Shrapnel was embedded in a very good friend’s desk right where his head would have been from above. He left work around 5 and the thing popped around 6. Very very luckily man. A Friday night.
We had gear in there and needed an update so I drove up there. Ended up in the parking lot with about ten other folks chatting. Nobody was allowed in by the FD. People were getting restless for updates so I gave up waiting on official news and fired up the cell phone. All the ops managers were still in it. I just hadn’t wanted to go around their formal process.
One of them answered first ring. “Nate! I’m in the middle of a mess here buddy, can I call you back?” “I know. I’m in the parking lot. Send someone down here to brief the crowd that’s hanging around down here or tell me what’s up and I’ll do it. They just need some info and I know you’re authorized to talk.”
LOL. He came down. Good guy. He didn’t realize there was a crowd.
Funniest thing was years after THAT I was working for another company and they also used these data centers. We go over there, my boss and I, to look at something in person and we shoot the breeze with the NOC staff for a couple of minutes and then ask to be escorted to our cabinets in the secured area.
The guy on the night shift who’d been there for almost a decade, asks my boss for his photo ID. “I have to check who you are, sir. But I know him... I’ve known him since we built this place.” as he points to me.
Hahaha. My boss was mildly insulted.
Stupid azz large scale IT biz is still waaaaaay too small in this town.
Anyway. Sorry about United. That’s a nasty one man.
I guess all of the above was to say, “Life goes on...” but man it’s a real poo sandwich when the layoffs are flying sometimes. I hope you had a good rebound from that misfortune. Mine wasn’t too awful. Took a couple of years.
Sometimes all one can do it plow on.
