The Panda Bear on Her Layoff from a Major US Corporation

Due to the Panda Bear taking on some additional projects, the Panda Bear Blog will only be updated once a week.   When she was starting her blog she read somewhere that a blogger should post twice a week but the Panda Bear would rather have one good longer post.

The Panda Bear was having some problems with her Hewlett Packard Netbook tonight.   'She thought she might have to take it to be repaired but it started to work again.   She noticed it was made in China.   Why can't US companies make more in the US?   The Panda Bear realizes that the price of some goods may go up.   However, if there were more well-paying jobs in the US, Americans could pay more for goods.

The Panda Bear wants to extend her sympathy to the currently unemployed.   She wants them to know that she has been among their ranks.   During the years 1992-1993, the Panda Bear got laid off from a major US insurance company and was unemployed for about a year.   For that year she was actively job hunting(though she volunteered to keep busy) and would have accepted about any office job.   She probably she have gone through a short retraining program which could be done while on US unemployment insurance.    The company that Panda Bear had worked for did not use PCs and they were starting to come into widespread use in 1992-1993.   Also the industry that the Panda Bear had be working in(property and casualty insurance) was severely effected in that recession.

Companies and strategies have different ways of laying people off.   Indeed, there are people who make good salaries on instructing companies on how to lay people off.    Sometimes, the Panda Bear finds it interesting to hear about how different organizations lay people off.  One company had the laid off workers train their replacements.   Some organizations discuss layoffs but never actually do it.   Insurance companies and many private companies keep layoff plans very quiet because they want to keep the workforce placid.

The Panda Bear had been very happy working in the insurance company.   When she worked for it, the insurance companies were supposed to be stable places to work.  She had received several promotions but she was still a fairly low level worker.   ( Once someone that came from company headquarters said she had heard all about the Panda Bear and how she was a very smart human Panda and how she had gone to Harvard-actually the Panda Bear had gone to Mount Holyoke College.  The Panda Bear latter got passed over a group of promotions and now sometimes the Panda Bear wonders why they did not promote her if she was supposed to be so smart.   Obviously, something else besides brains was needed to get ahead in this Fortune 500 company).

Anyway, one winter there started to be rumors of lay offs.  Management denied the rumors of layoffs.   Some workers said these rumors are coming from somewhere and that the job of management was to keep things calm.  One day the Panda Bear was told to go into a conference room with a group of other employees.   The Panda Bear and the other workers were told they were laid off and to leave right away the building right away.  The management of the company had lied about not laying people off.   Some people later told Panda Bear that the management had probably known for a few months that they were going have lay offs.   The company told the workers that it was against company policy for the company to give any kind of reference for its former employees besides verifying dates of employment.

It was the end of blind corporate loyalty for the Panda Bear.    The Panda Bear wants her readers to note several things about her layoff.   One is that when the Panda Bear and her coworkers were being laid off because the insurance company was not making a certain profit level, the CEO and heads of the company were making the most money in the history of insurance(the Panda Bear is being slightly sarcastic).

Secondly, layoff were done in order of worker status rather than what was necessarily most useful for the company.  

The Panda Bear on Self-Improvement Overload and Anxiety

The Panda Bear is right now in self-improvement overload.   She needs to loose ten pounds and cut back on coffee(physicians feel it makes her anxious) which she has not been successful in doing.   She has started to use Seasonal Affective Disorder Lamp.  She has started career coaching at work and has homework to do for this program.   In addition, she may start a new project which she will discuss if actually happens. 

However, what has stressed her out most is her home improvements.  Three weeks ago she announced to Mr. Panda the War on Mice and Clutter(WOMAC) when she saw a mouse in her apartment.   WOMAC is modeled after George Bush's War on Terror.   Mr. Panda likes to keep extra boxes, newspapers and old clothes in the apartment which the Panda Bear thinks are useful for mice to hide.    The Panda Bear told Mr. Panda that he was either for mice or against mice-there was no neutral position on the issue    Under the powers given to her under WOMAC, the Panda Bear threw out alot of stuff of Mr. Panda(and some of her clutter also to be totally honest).

So far there have been five mouse casualties under WOMAC but there have been no new mice caught for about a week and a half.   The Panda Bear thinks it was a mother mouse with her baby mice and they seem to have lived in the heating unit in her apartment.   She has stuffed up the space near the heat pipes which was open.   She has cleaned the house with peppermint soap; she read somewhere that mice did not like the smell of peppermint.   To the Panda Bear and Mr. Panda  the peppermint soap smells nice and if it helps keep out mice so much the better.
The Panda Bear read somewhere that it could be helpful to join a web program to help her fight clutter.   She joined the The Fly Lady.   While, the Panda Bear is sure this services of this website are probably quite useful the Panda Bear has not had time to read the FlyLady's daily updates. The Panda Bear feels like a total failure.   For some reason, home organization and projects are a major source of anxiety and fear for the Panda Bear.   The Panda Bear wonders is there some clinical term for extreme house project fear?   The Panda Bear has never understood why some people want excessively large places;they are more work to maintain.

The Panda Bear decided to table the The Fly Lady for now and take much tinier steps to organizing her place.   However, the Panda Bear wants her that she has found the book Household Hints for Dummies by Janet Sobesky to be quite a helpful.

 The Panda Bear feels that excessively high goals and standards lead to her being inert and not accomplishing anything.   Small minuscule even nano steps are what lead to successful change.   The Panda Bear told a psychologist that she thinks the term "head shrinking" for psychological help is that some people do have "shrink" their expectations and their mindset.

The Panda Bear on the Seasonal Affective Disorder and Rich Paying More Taxes

The Panda Bear has noticed the days are getting shorter. Now when she goes to work it is dark and when she leaves work it is dark. The Panda Bear notices she feels more tired. She thinks she may suffer from the Seasonal Affective Disorder(SAD).

However, the Panda Bear does not like the term SAD. She prefers calling it sensitivity to shorter days. The Panda Bear thinks that probably at one point in human history it probably was extremely beneficial to want to make the most use of daylight and sleep when it was dark.

Anyway, about a couple of years ago the Panda Bear bought a lightbox that is used for SAD but she never had the time at home to use it.  However, this week she had the brilliant idea to take it to work with her.   She will let her readers know if it helped her with SAD.

On the radio, the Panda Bear has kept on hearing debates on whether the rich should pay more taxes.   The Panda Bear thinks it is the patriotic duty of the rich to pay more taxes.  She thinks all Americans need to pitch in and help with the economy.  She thinks the rich need to prove that the are not laughing at the rest of us.

The Panda Bear on Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party

Everyone except some politicians know that unemployment is high and that there are many more job seekers than jobs available and that it will take years of steady growth for the US to get back to a reasonable full employment situation.   The Panda Bear thinks it is the high unemployment that is creatiang breeding ground for political activism.   People have time on their hands with no job prospects.

The Panda Bear normally does not consider herself to be a right wing person but she did find herself allied with the right during the bailouts of the big banks and AIG which the Panda Bear opposed.   She thinks these big companies want to pay no taxes and want pure capitalism when they are doing well and they want socialism when they fail.   The people who caused all these financial crises instead of getting fired got a government bailout and got called indispensable to the financial system.  

The Panda Bear also has some sympathy with the Occupy Wall Street movement which is coming from the left.   The Panda Bear heard one commentator say both the Left and the Right are feeling ripped off by big business.   Instead of fighting each other, the Panda Bear feels the Left and Right should join forces to fight their common enemy the big business/government elites.

To the Panda Bear, the US seems to be run by a giant plutocracy where there is a revolving door between business and government.  All the heads of corporations are on each others boards so the Panda Bear thinks they give each other a free reign in terms of compensation and employment conditions.  It seems no matter what happens the heads of industry and government seems to do well while the common person suffers.  The heads of both business and government don't seem to feel the need to follow the same rules as the common person while making the common person suffer from the misdeeds.