October 2009
The Marketing
Department occupied a space just big enough to house a total of thirteen desks
arranged strategically for maximum efficiency: a row of eight worktables in the
middle facing each other, with ample walking room behind the occupant—provided
that he or she didn’t push the chair way back, something I personally loved to
do whenever trying to break out of a writing slump, me leaning back and staring
at the ceiling and trying as hard as I could to rewire my brain. Or better yet,
whenever I was trying to take a nap during break time.
I couldn’t lean
that far back, however, at the risk of hitting the guy or gal behind me who
occupied another row of four desks, but this time facing a blue cubicle wall. Immediately
to my right—but not part of our tightly bound row of eight tables—was my boss’s
own desk, slightly bigger than the rest of our own worktables, and with enough distance
from us that someone entering the department would discern right away that this
guy, obviously, was the manager.
Orven—whose
head is shaved clean, like me—is tall and lanky. He towers over all of us at more
than six feet tall, what with the majority of us marketing guys standing around
five feet four to five feet five, the average height of a Filipino male. The lone
exception to this is Tom, one of our graphic designers, who stands around five
feet nine and change, but still shorter than our boss. The women in our
department? Well, I’d guess they were a tad taller than the average Filipina
height of four feet eleven—nothing to write home about, sure, but you take what
you can.
So why this
particular fixation on height? Because there was this specific month in 2009 when
everyone at the office—from IT to Accounting to Sales and Customer Service, not
just in Marketing—had their shoulders slumped, easily shaving off one or two
inches from one’s height. You could see it in the way everyone made their way
sluggishly to their workstations, head down, or the way they were miserably hunched
over their computers.
It was a
veritable Hobbitville that month at the office, with people shuffling about
like, well, hobbit zombies. It had to do with the massive wave of layoffs that
just hit the company more than two weeks prior, which, naturally, was affecting
employee morale.
Orven had just come
back from another cigarette break that day. I wondered how many smoke breaks
he’s had since the day started; I’d already accompanied him—along with the usual
suspects, the company’s smoking group that regularly trooped to the building’s
rooftop, puffing away and chewing the fat before our official shift began—where
we had our customary two sticks while my boss sipped on his morning coffee and
I, on the other hand, nursed my mug of tea.
I guessed Orven
had burned through half a pack of his Marlboro golds already, and this was
still before lunchtime.
I couldn’t
blame him, though. It’s hard enough being at the helm of any marketing department,
but imagine trying to design marketing collaterals, regularly send out email
promos (read: spam), and update company and client websites for an online-based,
Japanese vehicle-exporting firm whose owner was the epitome of extreme micromanagement.
Or heck, imagine that now you had to talk to half the team and actually tell
them that they’re being laid off.
I’d say sucking
on a cigarette was just what the doctor ordered (not really, but you know what
I mean) to mask the bitter taste on your mouth after reluctantly firing someone
on orders from the higher-ups.
No sooner had Orven
taken his seat than the Human Resources manager approached his desk, and then
motioned to the big conference room beside our department.
Apparently, we
all had to leave our workstations, troop to the conference room, and listen to
some sort of announcement. And like the good soldiers that we were, we did.
What choice did
we have?
So we each took
our seats and waited for the announcement. Whatever it was, it evidently had
something to do with the layoffs. It was all on our minds, and so the usual
good-natured pre-meeting banter was absent, replaced by a nervous silence.
Our HR manager—in
her impossibly high wedge sandals with ankle straps—walked in. I worked six
years for that company, and the only thing I remember about our HR manager was
her love for wedge sandals. She might have spearheaded a few employee programs here
and there during my tenure in the company, but now, when I think about it after
all these years, I can’t recall a single one of those programs no matter how
hard I try.
So Wedge
Sandals—I’ll refer to her as Wedge Sandals, because why not?—went over to our
boss and said something to the tune of “I’ll leave everything to you,” while
preparing to hightail it out of the room, prompting a huge sigh from Orven, who
requested her to stay.
I scoffed
loudly, enough for her to hear, and blurted out (for everyone to hear),
“How can an HR manager leave the announcement of a very delicate matter, which
directly affects the employees, to someone else?”
Wedge Sandals
looked at me, and then to Orven, and stayed standing beside my boss’s side. The
tense situation was made more awkward after my outburst, but I didn’t care. She
didn’t leave the conference room, sure, but she didn’t do the announcement
either. She left it to our manager.
(A quick
digression: there is no love lost between me and the members of the HR Department
in that company, headed by Wedge Sandals. In that office, the Marketing
Department was flanked by the Systems Department and Human Resources, and
whenever I had something to complain about with HR, like if any of their
personnel screwed up in any of their requests to Marketing—like a job ad, for
example, or any other request for collaterals—I’d let them know by simply shouting
my displeasure over the cubicle wall for everyone to hear. I wasn’t alone in
this assholery, by the way; I had a partner in crime who shared an equal hatred
for that HR Department—Jordan, one of our designers. Like me, he loved the “simply
shouting your displeasure over the cubicle wall for everyone to hear” approach
too. But back to that announcement in the conference room. Digression over.)
The gist of the
announcement was that the company had been forced to resort to
downsizing—something we already knew at that time, of course; after all, it had
been more than two weeks since coworkers (many of them close friends whom I’ve
worked with for the past five years) bit the corporate dust, at least
temporarily, and made themselves available again on the job market—but that
everyone, at least according to the official company memo, should just keep on plugging
along and remain professional as much as we could in light of the difficult
circumstances. You know, the usual corporate bullshit fed to the drones whenever
there was a round of layoffs.
The second part
of the announcement was that we had to sign a noncompete agreement. Apparently,
an account manager stole some confidential information from the company before
he left, along with leads and customers, and was now starting to clandestinely
recruit some of our colleagues—mostly from Sales and Customer Service,
naturally—to join the new business he was starting.
Needless to
say, there was no mistaking the message: it was a direct warning to all of us. Even
amid the downsizing, the higher-ups saw fit to issue a word of caution should
we choose to “enter into competition with an employer with a similar business
after the employment period is over.” In other words, don’t even fucking think
about joining the fledgling business that the former account manager was trying
to position as a legitimate competitor to Company 1. (May I refer to my
previous employer as Company 1, my dear reader? Yes? Thank you.)
Up until that
point, I had been relatively happy with my stint at Company 1, although it
wasn’t actually my first job. Fresh out of college at nineteen, I joined a
community newspaper in Cebu City as a freelance lifestyle writer and columnist,
but only stayed for a couple of years after I got tired of the shitty pay. In
fact, what finally pushed me to quit journalism at that time was an entire two
months of back pay that the paper owed me, which even today I can’t recall if I
was eventually compensated.
And so I left
my freelance writing gig for the newspaper and decided to go full time as a
marketing copywriter for Company 1—the first time in my professional life that I
would join an outsourcing firm. But more on that later.
So as we filed
out of the conference room with copies of the noncompete agreement in hand, it
occurred to me that perhaps it was high time to look for other options
career-wise. That day I started updating my résumé, and the succeeding days I’d
start emailing copies to recruiters.
In less than a
year, both Orven and I—and majority of the Marketing people who didn’t succumb
to the massive layoffs—would be gone from Company 1. (Spoiler: yes, I survived the
downsizing, but in hindsight, I actually preferred to be laid off. Why? Those
who were downsized at least got a sizable severance package. I only got my paltry
last pay.)
While other
members of the team started reading their noncompete agreements, I shoved my
copy inside a desk drawer, fished out my pack of Marlboro golds and lighter from
the same drawer, and approached Orven, who was already checking his pockets for
his own pack of smokes. He looked at me, as if reading my mind.
“Cigarette
break?” I asked.
