Downsized

My reporter's nose doesn't get used that much any more. But it still works ... sometimes too well.

Last week, I sensed something was wrong in our tiny little office. The boss was unusually quiet and even had a closed-door meeting with someone, a very unusual occurrence.

On Thursday, I found out why. The boss stopped into my office and told me to stop what I was working on. Seemed he had been talking with his consultant and that person said he needed to downsize his office. Since there was only one other fulltime person (another person works four days a week), I could see where this was headed.

Downsized.

In a sense, I was a victim of the current economic crisis. The boss said it was simply a matter of his consultant (whoever that is) telling him he had to cut a corner somewhere. Not as much money as needed was coming in (via advertising). And getting a loan for more money is, for a small company, a lot more difficult now than it might have been, say, a month ago.

The timing could have been better. My wife is going to have an operation in a week that is going to keep her out of work for at least two weeks (and more likely, four).

But bosses can't worry about that anymore.

I am sure we'll do fine. But when you hear talk of Congress getting billions of money to save companies who pay their CEOs millions a year ... and you realize you are being downsized to say a salary of ... er ... quite a bit less than millions a year, well, it is frustrating.

C'est la vie.