Slow Day at Work

Just for shits and giggles I put together a little spreadsheet of employees at my old company, breaking down who was there when I started (27 people), who was hired during the not-quite two years I was there (45 people), and what percentage of the total has left since I started there (51.4%). I also broke down the turnover rates by job duties. Surprise surprise, those in sales were highest – 88.3% for consultants, and 66.7% for account managers! Also, if you’re in one of those positions, you have a 1 in 3 chance of being fired. What a gyp!

Did you know that it’s not PC to use that term because it’s a racial slur against Gypsies?

I doubt most people have any idea what the origin of that word is. I learned it a couple of years ago because someone brought it up on the snopes message boards. When you were little, did your parents threaten to sell you to the Gypsies? My stepfather used to say that a lot. In fact, when I was a little kiddo in Ann Arbor, my best friend and I felt we had everything in common largely because we both had stepfathers who made that joke. I just realized today that I have never said this to my children. Does anyone say this anymore? Has the legacy of the Gypsies passed away?

For the last three weeks or so at work, we’ve had a security guard on constant patrol up and down the two upstairs hallways that bound the section where I sit. A few days after this started, the head of our division sent out a blanket email to address the questions employees had raised about this marked increase in security covering a very specific area in the building. “Oh, no reason,” the email said. “Security just likes to do stuff like that sometimes.” Then it wandered off, whistling innocently and looking in another direction.*

We had the same guard for the first couple of weeks, but the last few days it’s been someone new. She’s clearly much smarter than her predecessor, in that on the third day she’s just placed a chair at the intersection of the two hallways where she can see all the way down both. I think she has an iPod, too.

Robbie and I wondered whatever happened to the other guy, and decided he must have gotten burned out on just endlessly walking up and down the same two hallways. He’d probably have been much happier with a maze – you know, something to give a little bit of challenge and excitement to the job. But no, he got two boring, straight hallways. He got totally gypped.

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*I’m paraphrasing slightly.