This is a little something I wrote when my last employer was closing its doors. I thought the local newspaper would be interested in an insiders view of the closing. Apparently, I was wrong, as they never picked up the option. Oh, well, here it is anyway:

Hello, my name is Gregg G. Guydish. I am an agent in the Provisioning department at Prodigy Internet. I work for Convergys, and this is my story.

~

I am not one to go in for rumors, so, when, a few weeks back one of my coworkers told me in hushed tones that Convergys was planning to close its doors and move its operations to Tennessee, I absorbed it with quiet disbelief. After all, Convergys had a huge investment here. They have a lease on the building, invested money in special construction, tens of thousands of dollars in furniture and equipment, not to mention personelle. Besides, I pointed out, they just finished training a new group of Sales agents. More the fool I, I suppose.

After a few weeks I came to work amongst the ugly story that Convergys's closure was announced on the news and in the local papers and that very day the entire staff was called to an emergency meeting. Convergys was laying us off. Why did it happen, they proposed? Simple: Convergys grew too fast for a slowing economy. They acquired too much operation space and, when the economy took a downturn, they found themselves with excess capacity that wasn't paying for itself. Since Hazleton was the most recent acquisition, they said, it was the logical first choice to be cut. The better question I think everyone at Convergys is, or should be asking, was why did this office have excess capacity and why wasn't it paying for itself?

When I was hired I was promised that there would be plenty of opportunities for advancement and growth. That never materialized. They promised a pay raise after six months and then reneged. We had to fight tooth and nail to get them to honor the promise. They put a hiring freeze on us and a mandatory reduction of hours not once, but twice. The simple fact is, in my opinion and not necessarily representative of the rest of my fellow coworkers, that the closure of this office is a direct result of mismanagement by an inexperienced, unprepared executive staff. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Convergys simply refused to pay its employees what they were worth to retain them. Take my position for example. Sales agents received a bonus for every sale they made, as well as an hourly wage and other incentive programs where they could earn extra income. Agents coming over to the Provisioning department actually took a pay cut. We earned no bonuses, and had no incentives. We received a flat hourly wage and put up with more abuse in one day than any Sales agent would have to bear in a week. Oh, we complained to management, and I argued for a long time to anyone who would listen that our department should receive a raise, but our appeals fell on deaf ears. And then you wonder why Convergys is bailing. Ah well, it's a moot point now, I suppose. No one cares anymore, not that they ever did, apparently.

Convergys, as far as the Hazleton office is concerned, is a dying beast. I walk into work and see six Sales agents, two Provisioning agents and one Supervisor, if I'm lucky. I look around at the desks that once teamed with agents, a cacophony of noise as they worked now silent, and empty, instead. Agents come to work, stay an hour or two, then take early leave, apparently seeing no reason to stay, really. The hardest part is going to work in the morning. I find that if I can actually arrive at work, I have no real problem staying throughout the day, even if there really isn't enough work to keep me occupied, but getting out of bed is becoming difficult. It's hard to go in to work in a place where you know you are already fired. It was bad enough working at a place where the management was questionable at best, but now that I know how truly incompetent they really are, finding the strength of will to drag myself into the office is a Herculean effort.

Little things make it all the more surreal. Our hot food vendor cut their schedule back to two hours a day. The pictures of the staff have disappeared, leaving ugly marks on the wall where they once hung. Okay, I'll admit, maybe that's not such a bad thing. I'd rather see a scarred wall than the faces of the people that betrayed me. They're taking the desks out now. As we worked last Friday, a crew of burgundy clad workers dismantled the empty workstations, the whir of cordless screwdrivers adding an unreal touch to the workday. Sales agents wandered around and asked each other if they'd heard any rumors about the office closing, and cracked wise about how soon we would be working on the floor with beanbag chairs. It's good to see that we can have a sense of humor about it, there being nothing funny about being laid off in a weak economy, at Christmas. I've been unemployed before. It's not fun.

It's no secret that Convergys is on the hunt. Agents continue to disappear, sometimes by choice and sometime not. Monitoring is up to ensure quality. Convergys is concerned that some people will take advantage of the situation and badmouth the client. And who can blame them? It also gives Convergys the opportunity to avoid having to pay severance and unemployment, everyone here knows what they're thinking, we all live under the axe. On the other hand, it's getting easier to find a good parking space.

I've been with Convergys nearly two years. I stayed because I liked my job, not because I liked the company. When I had my primary interview they had only partial electricity and no heat. It's interesting to see the building returning to its original condition, as if an empty shell were its natural state. I'm currently scheduled to be released sometime between December second and fifteenth, I hope they let me stay to the end, I've never seen a company die before. It would bring symmetry to my employ at Convergys I think, to be there at the beginning, and the end. But it's going to be a long road from here, to there.

And there's the very real possibility that this article is all the ammunition that Convergys needs to fire me. Revealing Corporate secrets or something. Trust me, I trust them only so far as they will find a way to use this against me. But I stand on my protected First Amendment rights, and if they want to challenge me in this day, in light of September 11^th, they had better be prepared to do war. I've taken as much as I can from Convergys, now it's time they listened to me. I am an American Citizen, and I deserve respect. We all do. And that's a lesson Convergys has apparently forgotten. Oh, well, enough grandstanding, I'll get off my soapbox now. After all, tomorrow's another working day, and I've got a job to do.

G.G.G.