>> And five minutes ago, I got a phone call telling my that... my boss... 
>> no longer works for this company. O_O
> 
> I'm not sure why that would be a WTF.  I guess the first half-dozen 
> times you get fired or quit or whatever, it's a bit distressing.

Let me paint a picture:

When I first joined the company, everybody who worked there had been 
there for at least 5 years, and some of them very much longer.

If somebody decided to leave, it was always a fairly big surprise. You'd 
typically find out they were leaving 6 to 8 months before they actually 
left. It was company tradition that everybody would sign a leaving card. 
If the person was especially popular, there would be a small collection 
which would fund the purchase of some small gift. And the person would 
be presented with their card and their gift at a large gathering of 
everybody in the tea room.

(The same procedure applies to girls leaving on maternity, which has 
also happened once or twice.)

There would likely also be a social gathering one evening at one of the 
local restaurants to say goodbye to the person (although attendance at 
this is far more optional - what with people having kids and other 
social commitments, or just living too far away).

One time we had some guy work for us who had been in some kind of 
traffic accident. It did something to his brain; he apparently had no 
short-term memory. We'd train him to do something, and two days later he 
had no recollection of ever having done this task. In the end we let him 
go again, and it was quite a big shock to the collective social system 
of the workplace to see somebody leave with only a week's notice - even 
though he hadn't been here long yet.

Getting new people was also a rare and unusual event. Typically 
management would know about this at least two months in advance [not 
that they always remembered to warn ME!]

Basically, the workplace was an extremely stable and predictable 
environment.

All this bares no resemblence to how the company seems to operate now. 
After our head sales guy and our site manager both left abruptly (like, 
with 3 days' notice) just before we moved to the new building, things 
have never been stable again since.

The lab was always running flat-out, with barely enough hands to plough 
through all the work on our order books. Now we have entire weeks where 
everybody sits in the lab office playing Flash games with the volume 
turned up.

Under the direction of Fathead, people seemingly came and left on a day 
to day basis. We'd arrive for work on Tuesday morning and some random 
stranger would be standing amoungst us and Fathead would be "oh, yeah, I 
hired this new lab guy". One afternoon we'd have a meeting and it'd be 
like "oh hey, you remember these three people you were talking to this 
morning? Well they don't work here now."

And each time this happened, we'd all just stand there dumbfounded and 
be like "OMG, WTF? What's going on around this place?"

We've now reached the point where the workplace is so unstable that 
everybody almost takes in in their stride. Once upon a time, getting rid 
of the Director of IT would have been a really huge big deal. Now 
everybody just shrugs. The staff seem to change every five minutes 
around here - from the guy who washes the floor right up to the CEO.

(BTW, apparently we're getting a new CEO. A few years back we hired one 
of these guys who makes a career out of going into failing companies, 
turning them around and then moving on to the next one. Well, he was 
only supposed to be temporary. We haven't been turned around. And he's 
leaving. We have no idea who will replace him.)

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