I don't usually get too personal in blogs, but there are very personal reasons about how I thought of the Obama Garden.
Three weeks ago, I thought we were perfectly secure, economically. Indeed, I was getting a job with the large pharma company that my husband works for. The verbal offer had been spoken and accepted. My office space was already assigned. I had stopped taking consulting jobs a couple months ago in preparation for my new job, so my consulting income dried up.
Suddenly, HR got balky. Paperwork ground to a halt.
That Friday, takeover rumors started. An article in the Wall Street Journal said that a takeover was about to go down.
By the next Monday at 7:00 AM, the takeover was the top news on CNBC.
The large pharmaceutical company that my husband works for and that I was slated to join had been taken over by an even huger one that, in its previous two takeovers, has chewed up other pharma companies, digested their drug pipelines, and excreted all their employees over the next couple years.
The takeover company has stated that they will pfire (no, that's not a typo,) thousands of people before this deal is done. Probably twenty thousand. Or more. Probably more in the next couple years.
It's called "synergy."
On CNBC that morning, the two CEOs sat next to each other and grinned for the cameras. It was a done deal. It was so done that they had professionally printed wallpaper behind them with both their logos on it.
Yeah, my DH and his associates found out about the merger from the WSJ and CNBC, not from their own company. Classy, huh?
My new job evaporated.
And we were suddenly very worried about my husband's job. Twenty thousand people are going to be almost immediately laid off from his company. That's a scary and large percentage of the employees.
We went from the tax bracket that Obama plans to increase taxes on to ZERO over one weekend, at least in our fears.
One of my thoughts amidst the panic was, "At least I put in garden beds last fall. With $20 worth of seeds, at least I can keep us in fresh vegetables for the season, if he gets laid off. We can survive on beans, rice, and my garden. I'll bet our family of three can live on $30 per week."
We're more secure about his job, now. At least we're less worried considering the severence package that we've read about, plus my darling hubby has already been offered two jobs with other companies, if he does get laid off. (He's a smart guy.) His project seems to be important to the taking-over company. There is at least a moderate chance that he will be retained.
I've started looking for consulting business again. (If you're a pharmaceutical company in need of a consultant, click over to TK Consulting.)
We're not too badly off, considering. We have options.
Others, out there, are in much worse shape than we are. Even though I allowed myself a moment of relief that it isn't quite as much of a financial calamity as we had first thought, I had seen that abyss.
The layoff abyss is a dark place. We were calculating when to sell the house (now? when the merger closes? before or after layoffs decimate this county's economy where the DH's company is the largest private employer? Do we owe more than we could get?) and whether we'd have to move in with my parents in a retirement community.
I had started panic-applying for full-time jobs anywhere, even if my husband and I had to live apart for a while.
Some of my friends are still staring into that abyss. A lot of people I don't know are staring into it or are falling into it, right now.
My garden might help some of them. So I'm planning to plant an intensely cultivated garden to help them. Nobody turns away a perfectly ripe tomato or butternut squash. They might make a nice addition to the rice and ramen.
TK Kenyon
Obama Diary Blog