Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

Today, at work, I began to clean out my desk.

Yes, after being an employee of this firm for over ten thousand days, the company has asked me to leave.

Sort of.

When I started working a this company (a non-profit health insurance company), we filled two buildings here in Seattle: I and the other IT folks were in a run-down five-story affair that looked like it was designed by a prison warden, and a shiny new sixteen story custom-built office tower that was for the business teams. Both buildings were filled from roof to basement, plus we had other buildings in Tacoma, albeit with a smaller footprint.

Then we merged with some other non-profit health insurers, located in Oregon, Idaho, and Utah. Even though the Washington firm was the most financially solvent, had the best market penetration, and ran the most reliable custom-built claims processing system, Oregon was chosen as both the corporate headquarters and the software suite. Thereafter, the bigwigs swiftly began the first of many “draw downs” or RIFs (Reductions in Force)—both euphemisms for “layoffs”— striking every area, including some very deep cuts to divisions like IT. We were expensive, so we had chunks lopped off with each round of cuts.

Over the next decade, the Seattle-based workforce was reduced from a total of 21 floors down to 16, then 10, then 6, and most recently, to 4 occupied floors. This month, we learned that another “workplace renovation” is planned for this summer, which will bring the Seattle office down to only three occupied floors.

The thing is, even with all the layoffs, there isn’t enough room for all of us in three floors, so they’re kicking some folks out. I was informed that I was one of the resources who’d been “voted off the island.” I wasn’t fired, nor let go; I just “lost my desk,” and now I must become a “remote worker.”

The justification for this is typical bean-counter logic. Anyone who was in the office less than 50% of the working days will be booted to the curb, and to be fair, that makes some sense; I mean, if you’re not 100% in the office, you can obviously work from home, and if you’re barely in the office 50% of the time, you must be well-situated to work remotely.

The problem with that is, well, such single-fact metrics rarely give you an accurate picture of things.

Consider the following three facts, none of which are represented in the simplistic data that bolstered this decision:

• IT staff regularly work from home. It is, actually, a requirement that we be able to work from home, as many of us have on-call duties that require us to have access to our computer 24×7.
• After a decade-plus of RIFs, the average seniority of the incredibly reduced Seattle workforce is higher than average. In my immediate area alone, there’s no one with less than 15 years at the company. And staff with more seniority have more vacation time, which most of us take (rather than cashing it in).
• Last year, the parking lot outside my window became a construction zone. Many of the folks on my side of the building found the noise of jackhammers, pile drivers, angle grinders, and beepbeepbeep forklifts to be so utterly distracting that, being IT staff with work-from-home capability, we opted to work from home. A lot.

These three facts combine to explain why the predominant portion of the dozen or so folks who, like me, are being shown the company door, are from my mailstop and often from the side of the building where I sit.

I’ve seen this coming and, to be honest, in time I probably would have done this voluntarily, as part of this “workplace renovation” is to change over to the much-vaunted, widely despised “open floor plan,” where there are no walls, no cubicles, and where workers are seated two to a desk. They implemented this cheek-by-jowl, zero-privacy, pass-the-flu-bug floor plan down in Portland, and everyone there hates it. Everyone. After receiving blistering feedback that verged on open revolt from the Oregon folks, management naturally decided to roll it out here in Seattle, too. So, since the open floor plan is a non-starter for me, if they hadn’t voted me off the island, I’d have done it to myself, and in fairly short order.

However, it is still going to be a jarring shift, and as I began to clean out my desk, it proved to be a more poignant process than I expected. As I gathered together photos and old Dilbert cartoons, as I tossed out mementos and certificates of achievement, it felt like a break-up. In truth, it was one. Aside from relationships with family and my wife, my relationship with this company and the people in it is the longest-lived one in my life.

I’ve accrued a fair bit of stuff over my quarter century in these buildings. Anyone want an old Burroughs Assembler manual? I’ve got a Microsoft binder (for the MS-DOS C Compiler) that still has the old logo, complete with the blibbet as the middle “O”. I have several “office warfare” toys, including my internet-capable nerf-missile launching array, with which I am able to view (and attack) colleagues, even when I am away from the office.

Naturally, I won’t be taking all this detritus home. Not even half. I have books on languages that don’t exist anymore, manuals for tools we no longer use, cords for obsolete equipment, and more mechanical pencils than I can imagine ever using. I’ll be bringing home the copies of my novels I had on display, the few photos I still had on my walls, my collection of “gallon pins” from my blood donations, my “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS” tape (used to enforce a strict Do Not Disturb policy during crises), and a few other, incidental items.

I will take these items home to my own personal Elba, and try to fashion a different lifestyle. No longer will my friend Mike and I work the NYT Crossword over lunch (he does the downs; I do the acrosses, upside down), putting a full stop to a twenty-year old pattern. My social interaction will be cut at least by half, probably by two-thirds which, while an unabashed introvert, is still unwelcome; I mean, I know these people. And while my teammates, all of whom work down in Portland, will not notice a difference, I certainly will.

It will take a concerted effort not to cocoon, and I must avoid slipping into the habits of the secular eremite that I know I could all too easily become. I will have to create new patterns, to explore other social avenues, and to find an excuse to come into the city I love when my occupation no longer requires it.

Basically, I need to look for the silver lining, though right now all I can see is the cloud.

Microsoft Logo, 1982-87