Tyler's Swan Song

When Tyler’s company was bought by the competition, his entire team was told they would be losing their jobs. That was in 2003. At the same time they were told about their upcoming unemployment,the entire team was encouraged to stay on the job for over a year until the organization could complete its “system integration.”

It was called a “retention incentive,” explained Tyler. “We were all offered significant sums of money to stay on the job.” Most stayed. They were told when their last day would be. Their retention bonus would be in that final paycheck. .

The integration was supposed to happen over Labor Day. It didn’t.

About mid-August there was a flurry of activity. “I started getting lots of phone calls asking me to check things out. I already knew that we were going to miss the deadline, because there were still three to four hundred critical items that were incomplete.”

“So, did people really care if they worked another month or so?" I asked.

“Everyone was expecting their big payout at the beginning of September,” explained Tyler. “Some people really needed their money.”

As Tyler explained it, there were two problems. First, the company had been sending out glowing reports all summer every time they hit a milestone. Regardless of what was going on Tyler said, “They’d spin it to sound better than it really was.”

As a result, the staff thought everything was on schedule. In reality they were no where near schedule.

So now, two weeks before the project should have been completed, the company executives were in a frenzy.What they had been saying all along was disingenuous,and they knew people would not be happy.

“There were several full day meetings to try to figure out what to do about the situation. No one wanted to take the blame. The executives were very concerned how people would react.”

Next thing Tyler knows he’s on a conference call with HR and his boss. They are preparing a message to go out to explain the situation to the staff. They want Tyler to meet with his folks in person and began dictating exactly what he should say.

“So my boss starts giving me my talking points and I pretended to write them down. I was on the phone He couldn’t see me. Thank goodness he didn’t ask me to read those talking points back to him. I didn’t write down a word he said but I let him think I was taking it down verbatim.

So he would say something.and I would say,

repeat that.

Yeah, Got it.

Next.”

Instead Tyler went to his folks told them the truth  saying  they would need to stay on for an indefinite amount of time, maybe mid-October to November. The company was still going to give them a partial payout in the beginning of September.

What was their reaction?

They were fine However, the folks in San Antonio were not so happy. Evidently they did use the talking points to explain the situation to them. “They revolted, demanding their retention pay that day.”

Of course that wasn’t the end of the tale. Seems the company messed up  giving out those partial payments in September. Evidently HR made some mistakes on the payment file.

“Five out of 70 people were paid correctly. The other half received more than they were supposed to. The other half –less.

What happened?

They spent the day scrambling around trying to figure out how to manually cut checks to people. Dilbert lives and breathes.”

NOTE: Tyler's name has been changed to make sure he can keep his entire retention bonus and there is a second office but its not located in San Antonio.

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