Last night, I wrote about the 8am “All Hands” meeting at Michael’s day job that occured this morning. And, yes, it was to announce layoffs! Well, anytime a company’s stock plunges to less than $2/share, the powers that be get creative. Actually–I should say, they’re never “creative” by the standard definition. In fact, they always seem to follow the same old script.

In my experience, shareholders generally applaud layoffs, though, since they sometimes boost the stock value of a company. However, most times, those boosts are short-lived. But, the shareholders that are smart use the brief upswing in values to get out with some dignity. The others ride the optimism train right into the ground. Luckily, I never allowed Michael (like he could care one way or the other) to keep his 401K in company stock. Naturally, the company pays 401K matching in their own stock. So, occasionally, I have to go in and manually move those funds into something else. Recently, when the CEO left, Michael didn’t let me know right away (not insider trading because it was public knowledge)–so, we did lose about $1200. The stock bounced a little shortly thereafter. And, I cashed out when the going was good, cutting our losses to only about $500-600.

So, I’ll bet your wondering what they said in today’s meeting. Well, I am, too! I was always much better at deciphering the winds of change than Michael. All he hears is the acronyms and gets a mental cramp. He did say that they were announcing the beginnings of layoffs, though. And, he said they kept saying the “BSP’s” will get the worst of it for now. “BSP” is a new one on me, though! Anybody out there have any idea what that means?

I realized a while back that executives use terms like EBITA, synergies, and BSP’s BECAUSE they WANT to talk over the worker bees’ heads. It’s a ploy. That way, the worker bees can’t complain that they weren’t warned. After all, the executives did call a meeting, did they not? If the workers didn’t understand what was being said, then that’s on them. This jargon–or, Business-ese, I like to call it–is to prevent difficult or embarrassing questions from coming up. If the employees understood half of what was going on, they might ask a question that required one of the executives to have to come up with a B.S. answer to veil the truth (that’s where they talk again for five minutes straight and you still don’t know what they just said) or maybe (oops!) say too much. In a publicly traded company, they like to keep employees in the dark. If the employees start figuring out too much, they’ll spill the beans online in some forum somewhere for everyone to see–including the media. Occasionally, some poor soul in the audience will feel they understand enough to ask a question. But, inevitably, they just end up bringing embarrassment to their manager and director, which lands them on the unwritten list of people that get to go home soon. It’s unwritten and unspoken, but questions are discouraged.

So, here I am still wondering what the heck a BSP could be. Because, those poor fools are the first ones on the list.

April 4th, 2008
Categories: Uncategorized . Author: Trisha

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