Alright folks, so here’s the deal.  As I said earlier, it was announced that, effective immediately, everyone in my company would be taking a 5% pay/salary cut.  I am going to keep this fairly vague as it makes me a bit nervous to write about my job.  Some of you know where I work, so I just ask that you don’t say anything in the comments.

There will be layoffs, next week.  I thought this might be the case as next Friday is a payday.  They will happen across the company.  There are two pieces of good news here; one, I am fairly certain that I will not be laid off, and two, I don’t think they can possibly lay more people off after this.  It’s the 8th round of layoffs I’ve witnessed, and I’ve been with company for 5 years.

I didn’t ask who was being laid off and I don’t want to know.  My boss told me that “none of us” will be going, and I asked that that meant those of us (just 3) under him, or those of us in Creative Services.  He answered that between the three of us no one would be going.  This means at least one person will be going from CS.  Which…..fucking sucks.  Just a few years back there were roughly 30 of of us in CS, now there are 10 – including two directors and our VP.

My boss and I have positioned ourselves as pretty valuable assets for the company, luckily.  We’re multi-functional, we actively try to save the company money, we’re good at what we do, and we’re flexible.

That said, we’re on a sinking ship.  We’re on credit hold with most of our vendors and sales are crap.  I would guess that roughly 20% of our stores will be closing in the near future, which is just under 10% of our fleet.

The powers that be ARE doing what they can, but as we’ve seen, it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility that our company could shut down completely.  I do think that our CEO will fight to the end, it’s privately held, family run company.  And although we’re small to mid-sized, the brand would be missed.

At this point, I am having to reevaluate both my spending, budget and dept repayment goals.  Obviously now that I have a consolidation loan, that will be a large, fixed monthly payment.  I will continue to pay as much as I can toward the other two credit cards that remain open.  However, additional money coming in will need to be saved.  I am worried that I have thrown thousands toward my credit cards in the past few months.  It was GREAT to do so, but I think I need to start building up some emergency savings, just in the case the axe does fall.

However, in case you think I’ve lost ALL perspective, I consider myself to be very lucky.  I still have my job.  I also have parents who can and will help me out if and when I become unemployed.  This doesn’t mean they will pay all of my bills while I leisurely look for a new job, but that’s a HUGE deal, knowing that you have that cushion waiting for you.  Most people don’t have that.

For now, I plan on spending the weekend sleeping, listing some things on eBay and drinking wine.  Next week will likely be quiet here on the blog.

xo