JZJ-- that is a sad situation, but you made the right decision. Glad someone else could step up to foster.
Good luck with the CPR class, Georgette. Yes, we are a great group if I don't say so myself.
Today should be pretty normal here.... work, yoga with dh.... just when I think it will be normal, something will likely throw me for a loop.
I did body pump last night and am fairly sore today. Not horribly sore but we will see what tomorrow brings. A spike in the scale as well which tends to follow body pump for me.
Where's Becky? I am thinking of her! Just had a call with my manager this morning. Late this week, I'm going to get caught up in the wave of a reorg. My department will be swept away and dissolved. I don't know yet where I'll end up.
Oh, gosh, saef, that's terrible! I hope all goes well for you. Becky last posted to the weekly thread last Wednesday. She sounds busy with her DH and DS out of town for a bit. Perhaps she'll pop in.
Best Monty Python voice - "I'm not quite dead yet!"
Saef, all my sympathies! Empathies, even. I've been MIA lately due to collateral damage from this very thing. Busy with resume updating, interview planning, contemplating ... and I'm still not done with it. I spent about a month in the uncomfortable spot of not knowing where I was going to land, only hearing, "don't worry - everyone will have "something"". It is difficult to face that with optimism! Massages worked best to defuse the stress for me but I confess I lapsed back to the nightly cocktail for several months and am now in the process of breaking that habit.
The update: I am expecting a job offer in less than a week from a group I worked with a long time ago. Pros - I was very good at it back then and it hasn't changed that much, it gets me away from my desk now and then (less sedentary), and it plays to many of my strengths. The department is well-organized, consistent, and takes pride in incremental improvements. Cons - will be traveling again, though this time only US and Canada. It takes work to make it intellectually stimulating. I will have a corporate cell phone again, and be "on call". It can be a high-stress environment at times, and also moments of very high visibility during a crisis.
On the other hand, I have my current position, doing much the same thing only for a different manager. Pros - it REALLY plays to what I like to do, and there will be infinite opportunities to learn new things whenever I choose. My new manager is a terrific human being and the guys I work with are tops at what they do. I had to move locations, but that puts me closer to the vehicles and the parts coming back from dealers, and I can talk with the suppliers and engineers just about any time I need to. It is also the type of work that stays at work and does not intrude on my personal time. Ever. Cons - my boss's boss is one of the most incredibly toxic people I've ever met and seems to have it in for my boss. He's one of the few people here to ever get demoted for awful leadership/people skills (10 years ago), so now he's angry and bitter on top of it. I don't need to deal with him often, but when I do it has me on edge for days. Also, the new organization (which is a regurgitation of an old organization scheme that utterly failed) has goals that conflict and at least as of now, no consistent direction. And, I shouldn't forget to mention, my workload has doubled due to my partner in crime being sent to other responsibilities.
I'm really on the fence and I probably only have days before I will be forced into making a decision.
That is a tough one, Becky! Is one company more stable than another? We always take that into consideration when dh has considered job moves. Either way, it sounds like you'll have a great job!
I'll be thinking about you too, Saef.
A teacher just came in the library and told me we have 30 more days of school (with students). Hard to believe. The school years fly. I work another week or so after students leave but it's so much easier without the students! That's when I really buckle down, do inventory (over 35,000 books), and tackle all the jobs I don't have time for all year.
Thanks, all, for good wishes -- and BECKY!!! for reappearing, just when I needed to hear from someone who's a little further along in this process.
Today I'm getting officially notified of my fate. I will have to be a bit of an actress. (I had NO IDEA! Wow. Okay, what's the transition plan?) The earlier heads-up was one of those called-aside, done-on-the-phone things, the result of a leak that would have been punished, if traced back to its source.
I'm trying to pretend everything is normal. I have a writing class to proctor later on. My shoulders and neck are absolutely killing me. I can't wait till the day ends & I get to go to the gym to work off this tension.
You know, I know what it was like to be part of corporate America--I worked for a huge hospital chain. I felt like I was overworked 90% of the time and often wondered if I would keep my job (there were numerous time when layoffs occurred and once when our whole department was going to be outsourced to another country, but that ended up not happening while I was there).
Skip forward and I was finally, after 15 years there, able to quit and go to work with my DH. Well, that has a whole new set of stressors! When times were lean we were forced to lay off people and take less than desirable jobs (out of town which is a logistics nightmare). And just recently we "had" to take a job that I wanted us to walk away from. We "had" to take it because, basically, no other glass shop is equipped to do the work. But it is with a contractor with whom we've never worked for and we've heard some pretty shoddy stories about him. We got the contract yesterday and actually sent it to our attorney for a look-through because we're both leery about this one. At this point in time, we're so overbooked with work that we have to turn a lot of little jobs away. But that's okay. The little jobs often take more time than they are worth.
I feel bad for both of you, saef and Becky, not knowing exactly what will happen. But things do happen for a reason and if we make the best of the decisions we make and the "hand that is dealt" to us, we'll succeed!
Michele, it's within the same company. "Stability" in automotive is relative - it is a cyclical industry and we are peering toward the downside now.
Silverbirch, for a job that sticks to 40 hours a week and doesn't leak over, I can't beat my current position. Flexibility to telecommute now and then is very nice.
saef, I too can relate to the advance warning. My ex-boss was also a very good friend of mine and sometimes would preface conversations with "I gotta vent - pretend you didn't hear this." The reorg was one of those - I had way too much info for too long in advance. There were times I really wished she hadn't said anything.
I think the only thing most working people can expect these days is change. I'm self-employed but I'm never sure what's happening next with my clients. My only "constant" is that I'm always the second one let go - the gardeners/snow removers are first - when there's a downturn. Not exactly warm and fuzzy.
But that's the norm now. Anyone working is expendable - even in the "executive suite". Two of my clients were partners in their respective firms - one junior, one a founding partner - and they both got canned with no notice. They did receive big financial packages.
I have been given financial compensation once. A client showed up at the house while I was at work and handed DH an envelope with a directive to "give this to Dagmar. We're leaving tomorrow morning and I know she'll be very upset to not say goodbye to the dogs." In the envelope was a month's pay and several really nice photos of her dogs.
Other than that the only client's giving me any notice were the ones going on mat leave - kinda hard to not see that they were pregnant and I asked them outright whether they would keep me on.
Speaking of job change DH has quit his. But the boss didn't believe him apparently. DH had to tell the entire management staff at a meeting today and I don't believe it registered with his boss again. I'm sure he'll get a call asking where he is next week. He did offer to train his replacement - when they find one - and will go in and do the payroll until they do. So is he "quit" or not?
Well, I had a tension headache all day, starting at my eyebrows, rising up across my scalp and then down the back of my head into my neck and shoulders. All of that felt like steel bands pulling tighter & tighter all day. I started to understand faintly what migraines might be like.
I did manage to act surprised. I had rehearsed it in my head. I had also decided to speak up about being helpful and that I would assist with "messaging" the change.
It looks like I am safe. For now.
I'm supposed to proceed with two hires that I'm bringing in, and also with the third one for whom we just started searching. I am getting some new direct reports, too.
My brilliant, hard-driving manager, formerly my rival (she got the job over me, about six years ago), from whom I learned so much, and whom I respect and like immensely -- she lost her department and she's been reduced to a mere figurehead. I think she'll choose to go. She's facing what Becky is facing but has already made her decision & it's a matter of time. Unless they let her go in a delayed reaction in a few weeks' time.
I believe I will help manage the change and the transition, but after that, I don't know. My new manager-to-be reminds me of Becky's boss's boss. High levels of toxicity there. Suspicious, vengeful, politically shrewd though not bright, parroting reorg cliches, demanding unquestioning loyalty, no vision or imagination whatsoever. None of that is conducive to doing really good work or actually, getting the best out of the reorg that someone just over her head has conceived.
We'll see. But yeah, I appear to be wired into the new org chart. Not carrying a box out to my car tonight. Just headed for the gym to work off all that collected tension in my body.
I gotta take care of myself in the coming weeks and not eat. I don't drink, but eat, yeah, that was what brought me here, years ago. Don't want or need a relapse.
(no surfboard emoticon available here) to ride that wave. 
Best Monty Python voice - "I'm not quite dead yet!"
I'm really on the fence and I probably only have days before I will be forced into making a decision.
and I know she'll be very upset to not say goodbye to the dogs." In the envelope was a month's pay and several really nice photos of her dogs.
DH had to tell the entire management staff at a meeting today and I don't believe it registered with his boss again. I'm sure he'll get a call asking where he is next week. He did offer to train his replacement - when they find one - and will go in and do the payroll until they do. So is he "quit" or not? 
