A Comprehensive Failure

I work at a major media company.  When I started two years ago, I was recruited into what was billed as an "exciting," "revolutionary," even "historic" project.  In retrospect, it was an experiment.  But it was destined for revenue, they told me.  I was skeptical, but I jumped on board.

I soon discovered, that my new coworkers were earnest, hardworking.  And I jumped right in, with a similar sense of duty.  I'm not sure if it was out of fear of our experiment failing?  Or our commitment to the cause?  Or if it's just our collective nature?  We never discussed why, but we plugged away despite the strange office (the space had the smell and feel of a damp, nuclear fallout shelter, and we sat so close our knees touched, and worked in ear-popping silence), and despite the fact that we knew very little about the big picture.  We worked in short-deadline increments that got us through one week, then the next.  

And it was incredibly tedious work.  A kind of long-term mindless drudgery that most of us hadn't expected to encounter or endure in the media world.  The other departments in our big parent company did not appear weighed down by the same kind of tedium that kept us under the scorching fluorescent lights and turned our skin a greenish pale, for hours at a time.  We rarely had a need to leave our desks.  I invented "anti-clotting walks," which were hourly, round-the-block strolls to keep the blood flowing.     

Over time, we watched some coworkers leave-- off to new jobs.  Whenever we'd send someone off into the outside world, we'd wonder what they'd encounter.  When you left our project you were leaving the Truman Show.  We all sort of quietly ached to know what was beyond the sky-painted dome, though grateful for this vague, womb-like sense of job security.  

Job security, somehow despite tumult.  Our project started out with 50-something employees and as of last week there were 30.  Management changed hands while we were there.  Our platform also changed.  We received new deadlines, restructured, refocused.  And dove back into our work like little bees in a honeycomb.  

I mean, every once in a while we'd pop our heads up, raise an eyebrow and question the changes, but they were never explained to us, so we just went back to our work.

I went through several emotional cycles over the two years.  I absolutely hated everyone I worked with.  Or I hated only the people whose knees rubbed against mine, and everyone else in the room was tolerable.  Or I loved everyone-- on days when the camraderie was palpable.  There were days when I didn't care about any of them, and I came and went along my merry way.  There were days when I was deeply involved in their private human dramas, shared over coffee in the ladies room.  

After about a year, things appeared to pick up.  They moved us into a new office space, they sent some of us on trips to conventions and forums.  Other departments in the building began to learn that our project existed.   Our confidence boosted.  

Fewer raised eyebrows, but still we quietly wondered for how long would an experiment be funded?  We were never met with any really great news ("Our project just made millions in revenue!").  Never.  Not even close.  But there was never any devastating news either...

And then last week, almost two years to the day since I'd been hired, our Boss Man called us into a meeting to discuss the "long-term plan."  At long last, we would have that big picture discussion.  For two years we'd gone on doing as we were told, meeting deadlines, checking items off our to-do lists, in at 9 and out at 5, obedient, efficient.  

We marched into that meeting pretty much without a clue of what to expect.  Though the news of that week did not bode well.  We had just watched people leaving Lehman Brothers with their cardboard boxes, and had just watched the stock market crash.    

Thirty of us filed into the board room with our notepads and pens.  The jolly, talkative woman who'd worked at the company her whole life-- was wearing one of her famous floral outfits and matching acrylic nails... the young father-of-two who lives in Brooklyn, who taught me how to filter an excel spreadsheet... the 20-something, brash and but soft-hearted former frat boy who appears to have been plucked out of both the movie Wall Street and the show The Office- walked in looking down at his feet....  I watched them all walk in almost in slow motion.  A parade of exhausted employees-- nervous, weary, but- I think- ready for some news of their fate.  What would finally happen to the Truman Burbank and his cast of characters?

The meeting had a soupy and dreamlike feel.  Boss Man uttered the first, and only, words I remember:  "Our efforts...have comprehensively failed..."  I didn't hear much of the rest, until the boss concluded, "in two weeks, half of you will be gone.  We don't know yet, which ones we'll be letting go.  But please use this time to find a new job."