I was just standing in the lab office, admiring the back of Cute QA 
Girl's head, when she turned round and stared at me.

And that's when I realised... Cute QA Girl doesn't work here any more. O_O

What can I say? I guess I'm slowly losing my mind. Still, I'm in good 
company. We just had a "presentation" here that basically consisted of 
management cheerfully telling us that [more] compulsary redundancies are 
on the way in the next few days. This time they're going to interview 
everybody in the building and decide who to get rid of.

Of course, now the rumours are circulating that they already *know* 
exactly who they want to get rid of, and the interviews are just for 
show. And everybody has their own pet theory about who's gonna get it.

FUD. Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. To quote a phrase, "we haz it".

My personal favourit suggestion is that we get rid of Fathead and get a 
manager who actually *has* a clue. This, presumably, is an element of 
the set of suggestions which will _not_ be taken seriously by corporate 
management. I hypothesize that this set also has a nonempty intersection 
with the set of suggestions involving having a competent sales force.

So, what about me? Is my job going to me axed? Well, let's examine the 
evidence:

- There's only one of me. If they get rid of me, they lose the entire UK 
IT function.

- HQ IT seems to think they can do everything remotely anyway, so maybe 
they don't "need" me any more.

- I'm *ludicrasly* cheap. If they're trying to save money, getting rid 
of me doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. More logical to get rid of 
the senior project directors or something.

- About the only thing you can't do to a computer remotely is plug it in 
and switch it on. There are any number of other staff here who can 
probably handle that. (Indeed, one in particular seems to get lumbered 
with IT-related stuff that I don't do. She'll probably get most of my 
job if they decide I'm not necessary. Poor sod...)

So there you have it: we have conclusively proved.... something.


Oh god - I just heard Fathead on the phone to Jess. She's at the airport 
right now, about to leave the country for Turkey for her holiday. And 
Fathead is ringing her to say "oh, by the way, we're axing people's jobs 
while you're away, and we're going to interview everybody but you won't 
be here. But you have a nice holiday, OK?" Isn't that nice of him?

[I did like the comment in the meeting. "I know some of your collegues 
aren't here right now. Please don't tell them about any of this; we'll 
handle it." Nice...]

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