Surviving Both Sides of a Layoff

Monday, September 14, 2009
Topics: Economy
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Getting laid off can be a devastating experience; so can surviving a layoff. Often those who avoid the pink slips suffer from anxiety and guilt. ideastream® reporter Ida Lieszkovszky has this case in point that involves two friends who used to work together at a small design company in Copley, Ohio.

In February, Sam DiBernardo was let go. His friend and colleague of over 10 years, Tim Rascicci was not. These days they meet up for drinks, in this case lemonade and cranberry juice at the local Barnes and Nobles. DiBernado’s already picked up two books -

DiBernardo: The guide to finding a job and this one’s just kind of funny, Odd Jobs. Look you can be a Santa.

DiBernardo’s book choices are an apt reflection of his personality nowadays - part jokester, part lost soul.

DiBernardo: To be honest sometimes it can be hard to get out of bed.

DiBernardo’s company did what many small companies tried, to drag out their layoffs. They let one person go per week, for weeks on end, hoping that the economy would pick up and maybe that next person wouldn’t actually have to go. A compassionate strategy...and yet the reality is that those who were still employed felt even more nervous. Rascicci says people began to get paranoid.

Rascicci: Every week it turns in to a you know, what is a funeral…
DiBernardo: A death walk.
Racsicci: Yeah! I mean at one point it just got surreal.

Rascicci says colleagues used to go out for drinks after work, but not this year. They’re just not in the mood after seeing 35-or-so of their former coworkers walk out the door for good. The place started to look pretty empty. It was very surrealistic, it got to the point where after 4 or 5 weeks of just a few people laid off here and there people said we don’t wanna go out anymore.

Rascicci: We had a cubicle farm too and it’s like a tic tac toe board and I felt like a battleship at one point because everyone around me at one point was completely gone and there’s still 3 empty cubicles around me of the guys and girls I used to talk to every day.

And then there’s Cindy Black from Cleveland’s East Side ...unemployed now....and her friend, Karen, who’d rather not share her last name for fear of risking her job. They meet up every 6 weeks or so; today for coffee at a Caribou café. They used to work together at a cosmetics store in the mall next door. In fact, Karen—the layoff survivor--- was Cindy’s protégé.

Black: She was a customer that came in with here sister and sat down and had a good time with all of us and I looked at her and I said boy she might be a good fit and I grabbed her.

Now, Karen is a manager at the store, and Black? She was let go in May. The store just doesn’t need as many workers as it used to.

Karen: Nobody is in a hurry to throw their money at things that they can do without right now.

She says these days she’s been working through some new challenges.

Karen: I mean with the way that the economy is going nobody really, it’s not just in my store and retail it’s everywhere. Everybody feels a little bit shaken up and is working a lot harder taking on extras tasks not getting those raises and hanging on because right now we feel lucky if we are employed so I think that’s just kind of universal right now.

Ralph Dise thinks about people in this situation a lot.  He’s president of Dise and Company, a human resources consulting firm.

He says people who survive a layoff often don’t know how to act around their friends who did get cut; they end up feeling guilty and nervous about the future.

Dise: Well people who are survivors frequently say to someone who’s received severance and has gone out to find a new job they’ll ‘say man I wish I’d a been laid off and gotten severance at that time’ but most people are relieved when they don’t get laid off and what happens is that they go back to work and they focus on their job yet they always have this lingering feeling that it could be my turn next.

When it comes to that increased work load, Dise advises prioritizing.

Dise: There are certain things that we all know that we can stop doing and those things we all need to stop doing so they’re not overwhelmed by the new responsibilities that they have.

And one more thing - if you do keep seeing colleagues who got the ax, it’s probably a good idea to avoid talking about work. Unless, of course, you have a tip to pass on.

More In This Series...

This feature is part of the series Help Wanted.