…What little work remained was never any fun. All that summer no one took advantage of the city or the proximity of the lake for an aimless stroll during a lunch hour because we were too rabid with speculation about how dire things had become and who would be the next to go. We could enjoy nothing but our own dull rumoring…It was a shrill, carping, frenzied time, and as poisonous as an atmosphere as anyone had ever known — and we wanted nothing more than to stay in it forever.
Joshua Ferris — Then We Came to the End
If you’ve ever found yourself working for a hapless company in a downturn, you’ll recognize these words, that feeling. Anxiety to wake you up in the morning and depression to put you to bed at night. It’s a strange buzz that empties out your soul and your head and you find yourself so singularly focused, so hopelessly myopic, that it’s never clear that there’s a next move, much less the chance to make it.
The first half of 2006 was one of those times for me and now, relatively comfortable in a new job with new responsibilities and much happier with both, I can fairly say that that feeling, which some might call existential dread or paranoia or manic fucking depression is so intoxicating that once you’ve awoken from it, it’s hard to imagine how real it all was.
Joshua Ferris’ Then We Came to the End might be the moral equivalent of someone on the wagon living vicariously through Christopher Moltisanti. My pre-layoff feelings are so familiar, so tangible; just a few paragraphs and I easily recall the morning coffee dash wherein everyone places friendly wagers on who’ll be next to be disciplined, demoted, dismissed. Ferris transports the reader to those frenzied lunches eaten at your desk, with an enthusiastic supervisor [one of six, natch] egging you on, “empowering” you to do more for the same pay, if you’re lucky. Meanwhile they’re locking the toilet paper in the cabinet next to your desk. You’d think Sheryl Crow had been hired as office manager!
The feeling of never wanting to leave is elusive. On the one hand, you can’t help but hope for something better, to have your Joad Family moment, uproot and be gone forever, everything in the jalopy, no looking back. On the other, when morale dips, all sorts of guerrilla “teambuilding” arise — fear makes a strange camaraderie. It’s infectious, fueled by Schadenfreude and the giddy laughter that catches in your throat as you exit the elevator and return to your cubicle. It’s a vicious cycle of refilling and emptying your emotional stores, one day at a time.
But then it ends. And something else begins. And like the characters in Ferris’ book, there’s a certain withdrawal that comes with every forgotten name, or in the telling of a panicky work story no one’s heard because they weren’t there. You struggle to keep in touch with old friends, but sometimes it feels like a bad breakup. You ask yourself if re-living even the funniest moments is worth it.
The thing that kept me from being completely swept up in Ferris’ account of the nosedive was the presence of a sympathetic boss. If you drew two lines on a graph, one representing stupidity and the other fear, where they met would best describe the decision-making process at my last job. There was no principled decision being made; no single person calm at the helm. It was helter-skelter and willy nilly throughout the leadership cadre. So like Lynn Mason, cancer gnaws at a dessicated corporate structure, slowly breaking down the people who staff it. It’s an awful feeling and once it’s over, it’s as sweet and tender as a mercy killing and there’s no looking back from that.