Work

I went to the office this morning, along with the rest of my co-workers, to see what news from On High. The news: clean out your desks, underlings. Old S.W. was empowered to cut individual checks for expenses, but nobody will give us a straight answer about our severance. One Kraut says "ho, not to vorry; off course ve vill honor ze agreements," while two more say that our agreements were with the American corporation, now dissolved. So, I reckon we squeaky-wheel 'em with our own lawyers, and we wait. And move the hell on.

I cleaned out my desk, took the pictures of my children off the walls. I expunged my personal files from all the computer systems, not that there were many of those, gave my cache a good scrubbing out, and ran some utilities, just to leave no oopsies. I deleted any notes with regard to the daily operation of the company that my European Overlords might find helpful, while - of course - leaving all the actual action files intact. I would never, ever, damage or delete intellectual property. However...

There are no passwords for anything written down anywhere in existence - we follow Sound Security Practices on my Information Systems team - it wouldn't be safe otherwise! - so it will be interesting to see how the folks from abroad get in to any of the company's information when and if they get here. What? Don't look at me like that. I'm just following guidelines suggested to me, as a shipper of large amounts of cargo, by the United States Department of Homeland Security and The U.S. Customs Service! It's a good citizen thing.

Nobody knows the coding for the phone system but me. Nobody has the passwords to the accounting systems but me, not even old S.W.

I guess when someone comes over here from Europe, to collect the keys to the place and do whatever they plan to do with the stuff there, they'll have to find me. I mean, they didn't give any of us a notice period, we weren't told to leave information behind us, it was just...go home. So, yeah. We went home. But, finding me, if I don't provide forwarding information, could be difficult for them. Not impossible, but labor-intensive and irritating, since a) I'll be moving to a different city soon, and b) my phone number is a company number - I don't do the home phone thing. Oh, I'll get myself a cell phone in the next day or so...with a number that isn't listed...

I reckon they'll be talking to my lawyer from now on, anyway. The severance thing, you know. They can ask him to get in touch with me. I'll be glad to type them up some documents, or go teach 'em everything I know...at my hourly contract rate. Which has been known to make an attorney blanch.

You think I'm going to make it easy for them? Nuh-uh. Does that sound like the Queenie you know? Nuh-uh. In the meantime...I'll be polishing my resume and working on my skills with the Playstation.