When I was in university, I worked for a company that was rumored to be close to having a fairly sizeable downsizing in their office area. I worked part time in an area that was not going to be affected but the rumors were floating around as to who was getting chopped and how big the cut was going to be.
Finally, the day came and we started seeing people leaving the building during the day with their belongings boxed up so we knew that the layoffs had begun. I was sitting in the lunch room at the time and a few tables away was one of the loudmouths who worked in the office that was experiencing the layoffs. Someone made a comment about how the layoffs were unfortunate and the loudmouth commented that it wasn’t so bad because the company was getting rid of the “dead wood” in his words.
Shortly after lunch, the loudmouth found out that he was amongst the dead wood, as he was let go. The rumor was that he responded by barricading himself in his office and shredding as much paper as possible before he was escorted from the building for the last time.
In this instance, the moral of the story is to understand your value in the company.
While we can’t predict this 100% and in this economy, even productive people can be laid off, your best bet is to show value to the company and where possible make it obvious to others how you either add revenue to the company, help the company decrease costs or ideally, how you do both.
The funny part is that the loudmouth didn’t have a particularly good reputation certainly amongst the people I worked with, so he clearly had an overinflated opinion of himself.
Pingback: What I learned from other people | Bailout My Career