Surviving a layoff can hurt too

[LAWEATHER]

...Stress, fear and guilt take their toll on employees left to grapple with the aftermath of workforce losses.

Great Article today in the Los Angeles Times.
http://www.latimes.com/features/heal...,2314636.story

[Fake Post]

The L.A. Times should know about layoffs.

[Roy Hobbs]

Not surviving a layoff hurts more.

[Consider This]

Originally Posted by Roy Hobbs

Not surviving a layoff hurts more.

I was gonna say. The people who have lost their jobs should feel so sorry for those still cashing a paycheck. Woe be the employed.

[Stormtracker_Tony]

that's understandable...sometimes fear of a hardship can be emotionally harder than the hardship itself..Anyone, like myself, that have anxiety troubles can attest to it! Many times the thought of bad things affect me worse than when something bad actually does happen...True, the physical reality is worse when something happens, but the mental reality of something that could happen can make you "feel" just as bad (or even worse).....and if you've actually had a real "panic attack" over anxiety, it's some of the worst hell you could ever go through...So don't think for a second that stress of a potential layoff for an anxiety sufferer is hurts any less than an actual layoff of someone without anxiety troubles..

[Consider This]

Originally Posted by Stormtracker_Tony

So don't think for a second that stress of a potential layoff for an anxiety sufferer is hurts any less than an actual layoff of someone without anxiety troubles..

Baloney.

Just because you feel like your problems are worse than someone else's doesn't make it so.

And find me someone who's been laid off who doesn't have anxiety problems.

Take some pills. See a shrink. Do what you have to do but stop thinking I should feel more sorry for you than for someone whose problems are real and not just potential.

[TAFKA wacowx]

I don't know. Once you know that you are laid off, you can move on and find something else. It gives you a puropse and meaning and goal...to find another job.

Going to work everyday and being on pins and needles not knowing if you are going to be the next to be laid off/firing is a LOT worse. I have been there and I know. Once I was laid off, after a few days of moping I felt a lot better. Assuming that in most layoffs there is some sort of severence pay, look at it as someone paying you to look for a new and better job!

[RoyMcAvoy]

Few years back, I was one of two who survived a merger. Everyone elsem dozens of co-workers...fired.

On that day when the others were canned, I remember driving away and not knowing how to feel. Thankful that I survived. Angry that I was now working at a competitor in a far lesser role, (main anchor to OMB).

Looking back now, even though I did survive and keep my job, I'll always remember this: I never cried at my wedding or when my kids were born. I did cry that day when I got home.

The guilt was very heavy -- although my ex-colleagues did buy me a beer or two with their severance pay. The ND got something like 30k to leave.

Postscript: I hated the new part of surviving and found a new and better job in 9 days. That's right...9 days.

[Gil]

Originally Posted by RoyMcAvoy

Few years back, I was one of two who survived a merger. Everyone elsem dozens of co-workers...fired.

On that day when the others were canned, I remember driving away and not knowing how to feel. Thankful that I survived. Angry that I was now working at a competitor in a far lesser role, (main anchor to OMB).

Looking back now, even though I did survive and keep my job, I'll always remember this: I never cried at my wedding or when my kids were born. I did cry that day when I got home.

The guilt was very heavy -- although my ex-colleagues did buy me a beer or two with their severance pay. The ND got something like 30k to leave.

Postscript: I hated the new part of surviving and found a new and better job in 9 days. That's right...9 days.

That entire thing sucked so much and made me so angry... I still don't understand how the FCC allowed such a deal to be approved. You were indeed one of the more fortunate ones in more ways than one... and I am glad you found a way to say "adios" to those jerks in Canal Park.

Reading this thread brought back a different memory for me - one that most of you will not understand.

It was surviving Vietnam.

When I came home from the war, for a long, long time I suffered from "survivor's guilt." Why did I live? Why did the other guys get killed? I thought about it every day for the first two years or so. It was horrible, especially when I knew families of those who lost someone, or had to report a story about such things.

Unlike this business where you just might be able to figure out a reason - they were higher-paid, or had less seniority, or could not do as many jobs- in the war it was just random. Wrong place, wrong time. Make a mistake, *boom,* get killed. No warnings of impending layoffs, just the constant, daily threat of death or injury. You get numb when you are there, and then you think about it forever.

I am getting that same feeling these days, and it brings a dreadful sadness for eveyone going through it. For me it is mitigated by my age and the fact that losing my job would not be as serious as it used to be. For you who still need to find a career to finish, I hope for the best and fear the worst.

[ISTHISTHINGON?]

Originally Posted by TAFKA wacowx

I don't know. Once you know that you are laid off, you can move on and find something else.

I lived this one, kinda. Happy at my gig, ratings up big time, contract comes up for renew....it wasn't. Four months later I had a better job/$$. I would have re-signed the contract at the first station had they asked.
I don't think one is any worse than the other...there are just different levels. Same principle, different scenario.
Those who are fired=out of job in tough market.
Those who get to stay=job duties change wondering if they are next.
THose who are fired and hated job=no longer wasting time in job they hate.
Those who stay and hate job=wasting time.
There are many many more scenarios, obviously(aside from those who still love it).
But I think each person feels a unique pain. Regardless.

[MoistureFluxCapacitor]

Originally Posted by Gil

in the war it was just random. Wrong place, wrong time. Make a mistake, *boom,* get killed. No warnings of impending layoffs, just the constant, daily threat of death or injury. You get numb when you are there, and then you think about it forever.

I work with a charity comprised of, primarily, Vietnam Vets that goes back over to do charity work over there.

One of the original members of the board was a flight engineer on a P-3. He had a sinus infection and the flight doc wouldn't let him fly one day. His plane was shot down and all on board were lost. He struggled for years with the fact that being sick saved his life that day.

Survivor's guilt is a real thing. Granted...people aren't being killed, just losing their jobs, but I've been on both ends and there is a certain difficulty to surviving each round of cuts.

Getting axed has its own anxiety...but that can be turned into a positive energy. Survivor's guilt is just a dark cloud.

[adam & doctor drew]

Originally Posted by Consider This

I was gonna say. The people who have lost their jobs should feel so sorry for those still cashing a paycheck. Woe be the employed.

although if the people who survived are now doing 2-3 times more work for the same pay, that's not a great deal either.

[RoyMcAvoy]

Yes, I figured you would chime in with your experience from your flying days. That's always welcome here and I hope you're also hanging on Up North.

Looking back at that situation in our former city, all of us at that station went through it every day for 11 months. Not knowing if that would be our last day. We'd leave on a Friday, thankful that the new owners didn't can anybody that week. Thankful that we still had a newscast.

In the final weeks (as "Charlie was making his way closer to Saigon"...as I said more than once at the time), we did have a bizarre twisting of the usual norms of a newsroom.

People were editing their resume tapes in full open view (none of the old "shut the monitor off for a second or two" when someone else walks by an edit bay. I know that, for one, I started working longer hours to try and get really high-end, top-shelf packages done, on top of the anchoring. We were all pushing for outstanding live shots, while we still had the sat truck. It was a loose atmosphere, probably not unlike the camaraderie surrounding a military group during stressful times...obviously not life and death but there was plenty of anxiety.

The night before it all went down -- and we had a heads up that it would go down because the sister station in another state canned everyone and they were coming to meet with us at 10 AM the next day -- five of us went to Walgreens and bought about 100 VHS tapes. Spent all night dubbing them out, fully expecting the doors to be locked and the edit bays taken out the next day.

Fortunately, nearly all of my fired ex-colleagues landed in larger markets with much better jobs. Some are now top 15 and top 30 so it did work out for most...

Although, that was not the economy of 2009.

[Roy Hobbs]

Originally Posted by MoistureFluxCapacitor

I work with a charity comprised of, primarily, Vietnam Vets that goes back over to do charity work over there.

One of the original members of the board was a flight engineer on a P-3. He had a sinus infection and the flight doc wouldn't let him fly one day. His plane was shot down and all on board were lost. He struggled for years with the fact that being sick saved his life that day.

Survivor's guilt is a real thing. Granted...people aren't being killed, just losing their jobs, but I've been on both ends and there is a certain difficulty to surviving each round of cuts.

Getting axed has its own anxiety...but that can be turned into a positive energy. Survivor's guilt is just a dark cloud.

You sure about that one? I'm not aware of any P-3's shot down by hostile fire in Vietnam. Most were doing antisubmarine work off the coast....well out of missile range.

[Roy Hobbs]

Hmmmm. I stand corrected:

Vietnam
Operation Market Time
Beginning in 1964, forward deployed P-3s began flying a variety of missions under Operation Market Time from bases in the Philippines and Vietnam. The primary focus of these coastal patrols was to stem the supply of materials to the Viet Cong by sea, although several of these missions also became overland "feet dry" sorties. During one such mission, a small caliber artillery shell passed through a P-3 without rendering it mission incapable. During another overland mission, it is rumored, but not confirmed, that a P-3 shot down a North Vietnamese MiG with Zuni missiles. The only confirmed combat loss of a P-3 also occurred during Operation Market Time. In April 1968, a U.S. Navy P-3B of Patrol Squadron 26 (VP-26) was downed by anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) fire in the Gulf of Thailand with the loss of the entire crew. Two months earlier, in February 1968, another of VP-26's P-3Bs was operating in the same vicinity when it crashed with the loss of the entire crew. Originally attributed to be an aircraft mishap at low altitude, later conjecture is that this aircraft may have also fallen victim to AAA fire from the same source as the subsequent aircraft loss in April.

--from Wikipedia