Laid My Ass Off !!!

Something serious happened last week.

Something grave enough to get me started on a serious post. I was halfway through it, when I had to suddenly leave for home.
The next day the gravity of the situation was lost, and I just couldnt get myself to complete the post.

I did try. But when I re-read it, it sounded artificial.
And everyone knows how much I love honesty and genuineness. :)

To add to that, Kaushik suggested this post's title 'Laid my ass off' - which obviously kills any expectations of seriousness. I had to choose between the great title and the gravity of my post.

So here I am, rewriting my post, without any intention to sound serious or casual. Its as natural as the other posts.

A few weeks earlier, Oracle had finally managed to acquire Peoplesoft.

This came after an intense 18 month struggle during which Peoplesoft had tried virtually everything in the business book to avoid being taken over. But Oracle, the aggressive juggernaut that it is, finally managed to buy out Peoplesoft.
(Oracle and Peoplesoft are the number 2 and number 3 companies in the Business Application software field. SAP is number 1)

This meant quite a few things.

It meant an increased customer base, as most of Peoplesoft's customers would eventually move on to Oracle business applications.
It meant that Oracle would move from a distant 2nd position in the Business Applications market to a strong 2nd position behind SAP, the market leader.
It meant that Oracle would achieve 'economies of scale'; a business term which basically means that their average production cost would decrease as the production increases.

It meant one more thing.

Job cuts.

Since the takeover, we had a vague idea that there would be some job losses. Mind you, I am no expert on mergers and acquisitions, but I did read up a tutorial on mergers and acquisitions, and found myself staring at one of the 'advantages' of acquisitions - 'reduction of staff' - for a little longer than necessary.

Rumours started trickling in, that there are going to be quite a few job cuts in Oracle IDC as well. (IDC stands for India Development Center). A bit later, we learnt that every team across Oracle is going to get affected.
The alarm balls, I mean, bells started ringing.

Our team has four recent joinees - Sunil, Karthik, Pratik and I. Of these, Sunil, Pratik and Karthik belong to a sub-team headed by Sreeji, while I report directly to Ramesh, who's our team's manager.

Pratik had almost given in to the fact that he was going to have to pack his bags. I dont know if he was pretending, but every 10 minutes he had to say something which connected to the lay-offs.
Maybe it wouldnt have disturbed me too much.
But he kept using the word 'we' when he referred to being fired.

That perturbed me.
That got me thinking on whether it was that obvious that I should get fired.

Well, I did have my own logic on why it should be just me who should be fired from the team.

Except me, everyone else in my sub-team was experienced, and added value to the team. If they had to remove the least contributing person from my team, no prizes for picking the 'deserving' person. Besides Pratik's team had just two experienced seniors. They needed someone to carry the team's flag when the oldies leave. So I reckoned that none of them would be fired.

One chat conversation between Pratik and I is worth mentioning. Its a bit silly that its a chat conversation, since we sit right next to each other. But then the terror of the impending lay-offs had shut us up.

(I was deep into my work, when suddenly there appears the chat window with a message from Pratik.)

Pratik: Hey, asshole. I am serious. What do we do if we lose our jobs ?
('We' again. Grrrrr.)

Oka: You throw around a few computers and break a few monitors. Since I am not as strong as you, I'll throw around a few mouses and a few keyboards.

Pratik: [Beep, beep, beep]
(Some very sweet sounding words from an obviously unimpressed Pratik, urging me to be serious. But seriously, even my blog is too decent for such words.)

Oka: We'd go out and look for another job. What else ? Besides, the job market is booming. We'd find good jobs without much fuss.

Pratik: I am planning to direct or act in a porn movie. I'll then sell the CDs. At least until I get a decent job.

Oka: Yeah, stick to directing. If you act, people might think that its a clip from the discovery channel. And whatever you say, animal sex is not arousing.
(Pratik is big and built like an animal)

'Ouch !! You fucking animal !!'
(I figured that this wouldnt need a label. Its clear who cried out.)

Oka: Hey, I had a weird dream yesterday night.

Pratik: What?

Oka: We both are fired and...

Pratik: Bastard, its not a dream. It'll happen now.

Oka: Listen !

Oka: Well, we both are fired. We pack our bags, and then walk dully down the stairs. We cross the road and wait for the bus.

Oka: We then decide to take the share auto. There's one auto with two people already sitting in it. We get into it.

Oka: The auto driver waits for the 5th seat to be filled so that he can drive with the vehicle full.

Pratik: Then ?
(Animals are instinctive. In their book of values, patience is not a virtue.)

Oka: You get impatient and force the driver to start.

Oka: He just about starts when a guy, huffing and puffing, calls out for the auto to stop. The voice sounds strangely familiar.

Oka: We both turn around to check him out.

Pratik: Then ?

Oka: It is Ramesh.

(We share a moment of crazed laughing. Thankfully the others have their headphones on. I wasnt too eager about announcing this joke to the general public.)

(Pratik had a weird look on his face.)

Oka: What are you doing ?

Pratik: Copying this conversation to Ramesh.

Later, Pratik and I plodded down to the cafeteria. We do that every half an hour.
So much that people had started to place their coffee and biscuit orders with us.

We met up with Sandeep there. (Sandeep sits on our floor). Sandeep is another big guy like Pratik. After a brief palm crushing match, the two of them finally start behaving again like humans. Thats when I joined in the conversation.

Fifteen minutes later, which included a few serious discussions about the lay-offs, and a few not so serious (guffawing rather) discussions about them, a few envious looks at the cafeteria workers (who we thought held stable jobs), and a few err.. lets say, not-envious looks at the girls sitting on the adjacent table, we walked back to our cubicles.

We obviously couldnt work, because the feeling that our asses were on fire wouldnt let us sit, forget about working. So we started chatting with people we knew.

I managed to scare Manish that the job-cut wave is coming his way soon. As if it were some tsunami, and he's standing in just an underwear with a small yapping puppy next to him, watching the waves looming over him.

He did get scared. You cant deny me that much credit.

A chat window pops up, and I see a message from Pratik. I see a pasted conversation between him and Sandeep. It went something like this.

Pratik: 12 in Projects and 4 in financials have lost their jobs.
(Obviously, Pratik was doing the same thing as me.)

Sandeep: Yeah.

Pratik: and around 30 in HRMS.

Sandeep: Yeah... and me too.

Pratik: What?

Sandeep: Yeah, I've lost my job as well.

Pratik: What the fuck are you saying. Stop bluffing.

Sandeep: Bastard, I am not kidding. I have a big relieving letter in my hand.

Five minutes later, Sandeep walks into our cubicle, hands over a few SQL books to Pratik.
His eyes are bloodshot.
He shrugs, and then leaves.

All we could do was look at each other.

We were shocked out of our fucking wits.

For about five minutes, there was absolute silence between the two of us. We both were sitting back on our chairs, with our heads bent. I kept going back to the conversation we had with Sandeep barely a few hours back.

The lay-offs had finally come to our floor. It would be minutes before it comes to our team. Ramesh would lay one of us off any moment.

Then walks in Karthik.
I realised that he hadnt been sitting at his place till then.
Ramesh follows him.

'Just give me 5 minutes.' Karthik said.

My eyes get down, and find a big white envelope in Ramesh's hands.

The reality hit me. I now knew who was the casualty in our team. Somehow I regretted all the casual jokes I had made about the whole issue. For a moment I hated my nonchalant attitude towards the whole thing. This thing was serious.

Karthik switched off his PC, got up, picked up the plastic cover containing his stuff and with the other hand picked up the white envelope.

As he was about to walk out of our cubicle, our eyes met.

Just for a second.

He turned away immediately.
I really am at a loss for words on how I felt, when I saw the pain and disbelief in his eyes.

After Karthik had left, Ramesh called forth a meeting. He announced that we had to lose one person unfortunately. He also said that with this, the lay-offs for this cycle finally come to an end.

I didnt feel relieved.

The meeting came to an uneasy end and everyone walked back to their seats.

I still couldnt work. I swivelled around slowly on my chair, towards where Karthik sits.... I mean... used to sit.

His monitor, which always had colorful wallpapers, was dark.
His desk was unusually uncluttered.

A boy came and wiped away the marker marks on the desk.

My eyes rested on the plastic bottle on his desk, with water upto half the level.
A tiny water droplet tricked down the outer surface of the bottle.

The boy picked up the water bottle, gave the desk a final wipe with his cloth, and left.