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Layoffs
It’s Just Business: Working And Getting Laid Off in America
Daily Magic: 04 August 2024
Bruce wrote about his experience working for a Minneapolis-based publicly-traded business that prints checks and is now a “trusted payments solutions and business technology” provider. I’ll add some tidbits about going to pick up checks to meet payroll for a nationally-influential nonprofit organization in Los Angeles.
Hey! Where Did My Job Go?
By Bruce White
I was an engineer working in aerospace back in 2006. My specialty was continuous improvement. I had been with the same company for 15 years. My salary was maxed out and my commute was typically 1 hour and 45 minutes each way through grueling city roads in the Philadelphia area. I’d had enough and was looking seriously for a better opportunity.
My phone rang and a recruiter was on the other end. “Your credentials are just what they’re looking for. Let me set up an interview.”
The job was 20 minutes from my home and the starting salary would be a 50% increase from what I was making. I’d be working in the commercial printing industry, but that really didn’t matter. In my position, understanding the processes involved and relating to the personnel mattered. The interviews went well and within 2 weeks I received the offer.
Hallelujah! How much better could it get? I set out to understand how this business worked and the people that made it run. The company had 18 plants in the U.S. and one in Canada, and was divesting its product lines by acquiring commercial printing businesses like the one I was going to in order to offset their main product line: personal checks.
We had great success in the first two years I was on board. As always, at first there was resistance to change, but once we got past that, we took off. The plant where I was working had been one of the poorest performers relative to the other plants in the business.
I would sit in the plant manager’s office during weekly corporate calls and…
