The Gingerbread Man 

They said I could run but not hide and sooner or later it would catch up with me and snatch me away. They also said that it came in different forms and wore a different mask every time. When it came, they assured me, only the brave one faced it with fortitude and the not so brave one trembled and submitted. They were right on about almost all of it except they didn’t tell me for how long I would still have to keep running, nor did they tell me how many possible disguises it could suggest upon itself. And never did they help me predict whether I would be as brave as I thought, or not at all.

No, it is not the Grim Reaper that I am referring to, although it can be equally well alluded to. I am talking about the layoffs – yeah, the massive, juicy (to some,) all-loving but non-caring corporate level layoffs.

Throughout my not too successful career as an engineer in the so called high-tech business, I have somehow become an expert in it, even though I survived (so far) every layoff that came my way. I like to think of myself as a philosopher who can talk with infinite wisdom about life and death. But I am in reality someone who has not the slightest idea what he’s babbling about. The truth is, I pretty much jinxed every single company I worked for, present one included. Whenever that kind of thought seizes me I recall an episode of ‘Twilight Zone’ that I watched some 30 years ago. It was about a WWII US navy cruiser pulling a sole survivor from a recently attacked convoy out of the icy cold water of the Northern Atlantic Ocean. He (the survivor) was in a state of constant coma so the crews couldn’t figure out his particular identity except that he had been on the Titanic where only women and children could have survived by default. Then the cruiser was torpedoed and was sinking fast. The sole survivor suddenly woke up, snatched a life jacket and threw himself overboard. The show ended with another boat picking him up, again in a state of complete coma, and the only thing they could find out about him was that he survived both the Titanic and the previous ship wrack. While they were at it, the siren wailed, signaling the approach of another German submarine…

So this is where I stand; I am the rat who always jumps first whenever the ride gets rough. But this rat would like to share with his fellow proletarian workers something he has been through so far; something that hopefully none of the readers will ever have to find out the truthfulness of what I’m about to say in person.

Of the 17 major layoffs that I’ve witnessed, three stood out as the most stinky, for a lousy beaner like me. But to he who happens to occupy the opposite end of the labor-management spectrum, they could serve as prime examples of the highest standard in management efficiency.  

The first one was the ‘Darkness at Noon’ style. It was based on the title of a book that I read years ago. I strongly recommend it to anyone who’s interested in enhancing his experience in appreciating this style of layoff. My brushing against this one came while working for S-company, which was my first ‘real’ job not counting my cheap labor PhD and half-ass Post-doc days. My job involved re-evaluating some old designs from two generations ago with the hopes of recycling some useful ideas for the next generation products. That was on the official job description but realistically I was watching over a pile of scraps like a stupid junkyard dog and it didn’t take long before someone came along and popped my cap.

The day before the layoff we all got an email stating that there would be an organizational change tomorrow, and we were all advised to report to work no later than 8am. It further stated that if you found yourself locked out from your computer, “try not to be (overly) alarmed as it was only a part of SOP (POS is more likely.)” After reading the memo, I coolly went to my supervisor’s office to discuss with him on how my on-going simulation work might be disrupted due to the computer locked down aforementioned. He looked at me with total incredulity on his face, but obviously (now that I think of it) decided not to burst my bubble. To him I must have appeared like a totally lost soul wondering about the platform, watching my train go by and asking the boarding master whether I could still go get a candy bar before the boarding started – I was that stupid.

It was a bitterly cold morning when I arrived and everyone looked gloomy. Over the night, someone, probably from security, had left on everyone’s desk a note printed in red bold typeface. It asked us specifically not to temper with any equipment (including the light switch which was considered a company property as well) and to wait for your phone to ring, ‘Further instructions on how to proceed will be given to you via the phone…’ was how they put it. Then I heard the first ring from the far left of the corridor, which proceeded to zigzag its way down with people picking it up, one by one, until mine started to ring as well. I answered it and from the other side of the earpiece there was this voice that I never heard of before, but shall never fail to recognize again. ‘You Stay’ was the only thing that came through the line and it was on that day, at that spot that I grew from a boy to a man.

After hearing the death bell ringing for three more times, I moved on to company ‘X,’ which back then was the giant of  high tech equipment manufacturer. Being called a giant (or a dinosaur) justified X company well; it was big, slow, ate in a lot of half-talented engineers like me and shitted out a full load of what was generally known as upper management materials. But you will be surprised by how fast it can mobilize itself in executing what I call the ‘Fire Ants’ style of layoffs.

Here in Texas the legend has it that whenever a group of fire ants crawls up to your leg, they would communicate among themselves and take their bites all at the same time to make sure they hurt you like hell. This was exactly how X-company carried out its head count reduction.  It’s of no use for me to try pretending feigning stupid by rolling over and playing dead this time – anyone who’s not legally blind (blonde?) could see it’s coming from a mile away because the entire building was surrounded by hundreds of extra security guards. And to tell the truth, not all of them looked quite legit to me. I could swear that I recognized a dozen or so of them from a local bar that I frequented where they worked as bouncers for late night shift. Anyway, someone must have given the ‘go’ signal because all of a sudden you saw them rushing into and storming through the building and within the next hour or so, you watched them running back and forth between the building and the parking lot, going in empty handed and coming out with a geeky looking engineer dangling, walking casually as they’re taking the garbage out into oblivion after a hearty dinner. Some X-company loyalist once told me that if you ever made it to the cafeteria for lunch that day, it would have meant that you’d survived the layoff. Unfortunately that’s  proven to be a false presumption for this poor bastard - they dragged him out of cafeteria in the presence of a huge lunch crowd and he was survived by a plate of untouched spaghetti which I ate later – I knew he would have wanted me to have it.

The last one is the ‘Dead Man Walks’ style. This just happened a week ago in here at company-D, right after I thought I had seen everything from companies S and X. It happened on Thursday February the 14^th, Valentine’s Day (a sequel to the Valentine Day’s Massacre? History does have its irony.) For two months the rumors of shit was about to hit the fan had been going around but most people shrugged it off as mere boogieman fantasies. I had this colleague who did think that the layoff was coming but thought he would be spared based on his seniority (in rank.) His particular belief was further strengthened on Monday night, 3 nights before the massacre, when our division director sent him an email at home, asking for technical data during the middle of a late night conference call with some clients overseas. He must have felt as secure as a baby cub wrapped around the loving arms of his mama bear.

I on the other hand knew that the final meal had been cooked on Wednesday night as our Section Director of Process Development started handing out his personal toys (little scientific gizmos you would usually find at Discovery store) to his old acquaintances as gifts. From my tons of experiences I knew at once that whenever someone of his position started preparing himself, the bomb would be dropped within the next 12 hours. Before entering the building on Thursday morning, I noticed that almost all managers had arrived early that day (easy to spot, just go counting the expensive sport cars on the parking lot.) I also noticed that HR had already set up two separate rooms from the main conference room by pulling up a built-in divider across the middle of it (so that’s the purpose of that thing!) And I said to myself ‘Wow! So this is the gas chamber.’ At 9am sharp they started leading people whose names were on the hit-list to the chambers and I believe they searched the restroom before they began so there really was no place to hide. I saw people walk past my office, down the corridor and never to return. This is how I came up with the name ‘Dead Man Walk.’

As for my clueless colleague, he walked his mile a bit differently. Instead of a preacher (HR), his boss (the same one who asked for data 3 days ago) walked him in the following manner. The boss man asked my colleague to join him in his office to discuss some simulations.  He gladly obliged, hopping and prancing around the boss’s heels, happy as an innocent puppy and clueless like a prize winning turkey. The boss led him via a route where they would have to pass the chamber before reaching his office. Upon reaching the door of the chamber, he seized him by his arm and pushed him into the room, similar in fashion to what Brother Grimm’s Witch had in mind for Hensel and Gretel. Because it happened quickly I assumed it must be merciful but that I was guessing, too.

Although layoffs came in different styles, they always concluded similarly with the boss man called for a cross-the-board meeting after they finish with the body count. I think our fearless corporate leaders might have a special name for it but I always called it the memorial service. For the survivors, this was just as painful, if not more so, than being actually laid off. I don’t think it’s humanly possible to find another occasion flooded with one ounce more of fake emotions than these meetings could convey; a brothel house was probably one’s best bet but even that was a pretty long shot. For the sole reason of lacking originality, the boss man always started with:

(Boss clears his throat)

 ‘This is the worst day of my professional life…’ (No it’s not, it is the worst days of THEIR professional lives, they are out of a job and you still have yours safely stashed away under your fat ass you bastard.)

(Boss wets his lips, adding strength to voice)

‘We should all remember the good examples set up by their professional attitudes… ’ (To Hell with you! You were bitching and moaning to me yesterday afternoon in the restroom about what a bunch of incompetent idiots they were while I was taking a piss, you  prick!)

After a few embarrassing minutes of silence, one of his pets would always pick up the pom-pom and give something to the following effect:

(Boss’s pet, licking boss’s boots at the same time)

‘Well, we can only move forward from this point on so let’s…’ (Yeah, I know you wanted that corner office since day one but don’t you think you should wait a bit, the chair is still warm you vulture. And by the way, I will dress in red and dance on your grave when your day comes. This much I promise you.)

These memorial services, to give them justice, did serve their purposes, at least to me. As the meeting dragged on I began to miss the fallen ones more and more, even though I didn’t always see eye to eye with them while they were here. I missed them because had this not happened, I would never have to witness the human hypocrisy to this extreme.

To wrap it up, I’ve been constantly reminded by others that every story has to have at least one moral so here it goes: I have figured out, from the sequence of unfortunate events described above, my role within the grand scheme of the modern capitalist system - It needs a running prey and I am the chosen one. I have heard its footsteps; watched people I knew bite the dust; stared from the corner of my eye at its approaching and understood well that very soon it would be tapping me on the shoulder. But before that day comes I will simply keep running, running as fast as I can until some witty old fox tricks me into his mouth and snaps me into two halves like the poor Gingerbread Man. Until that happens, I will simply keep running, running till the day I bump into old McArthur so I can tell him ‘Humbly reporting, Sir, This old soldier neither died nor faded away, he was just too tired to run any further.’   

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An Epilog

I feel strange about writing an epilog for ‘Gingerbread Man.’ This sense of strangeness has two aspects. For one thing, ‘Gingerbread Man’ is in style of a short story and hardly anyone adds epilog to a short story. It is rarely practiced not for the sake of mental laziness but to avoid the awkward situation of having an epilog running longer than the text itself. For another, even as a short story it isn’t really that successful an attempt. Actually it wasn’t even composed with a sober mind. To this my two dear friends 3CC and CW (in alphabetical order) can attest – They can assure you that I am usually pretty drunk whenever I call them on Saturday night. The calling to being of ‘Gingerbread Man’ was likely the result of an unhappy marriage consummated on such a night between an extra bottle of wine and a hyper-active imagination of a frightened middle-age man finding no proper emotional outlet.

This wild imagination of mine was triggered by reading 3CC’s (Now arguably 4CC, thus he claimed after his returning from San Diego early this year.) ‘Life in The Time of Bubbles – Have You Stripped Yourself Completely Naked Yet?’ series. Via different path that was given to each of us, 4CC and I went through a lot from our quests for this Holy Grail called ‘Permanent Job’ and such a utopian concept it was, indeed. While we were struggling with hanging on to whatever job we had by our fingernails, our friend CW had scored countless victories and collected numerous trophies from many battle fields of career hopping. Propelled by his talent and hard-working attitude (Let him fool you not; he is a workaholic), he has made it to seeing the daylights of two IPOs (or their equivalencies) and there’re probably a few more to come in the future. But unfortunately for poor 4CC and I, the Law of Conservation of Liquidable Capital dictated that his (CW’s) way to success had to be accompanied by a few losers serving as collateral damages and that’s how the companies we worked for got torpedoed down, dragging us along with them. (Just kidding, the industry each of us works in doesn’t really overlap and I am saying all these simply out of jealousy.) It was the fear, the anxiety, the continuous web-based job searching, all glued together by one constant question, ‘What the hell am I going to do next?’ that drove me to write the story.

Now that I have explained the motivation behind the writing of ‘Gingerbread Man’, I still owe everyone an explanation about this epilog. The reason is simple but sincere: I am doing it out of my eternal gratitude toward my two dear friends who had painstakingly translated my work into Chinese. Their deeds go far beyond the scope of conventional literary translation, to the extent that each of the two pieces can and shall be considered an original creation by its own right. I am not saying that their translations are not faithful to my original intention. On the contrary, not only have they both said (in Chinese) what I exactly wished to express, but they also helped me say something I might have thought of saying but either didn’t know how to, or might have tried once but given up soon after for the lackings of gusts they had so easily championed. I start to appreciate how fortunate a writer (God forbids that I consider myself one) truly is if he can find someone he knows well and trust even better to translate his work for him. And the fact that I have two, just imagine!

When I wrote it I was reading the biography of James Thurber, one of my favorite American writers. Because of that, ‘Gingerbread Man’ can be considered as a poor imitation of ‘Thurber’s Carnival’ in lousy ‘Chinglish’. But personally I like to think of it as my ‘Les Fleurs du mar.’ It started as a smelly lousy imitation but has been transcending ever since, aided by the endeavors my two friends have put into translating it, to a level that’s far beyond where I could ever dream of.

I was once accused of not being considerate enough to my fallen comrades, for my poor choice of timing to write such a story while people whose lives have been affected were still licking their wounds. A just accusation it is and against which I have neither mean nor desire to defend myself. What I do wish to say is this: I knew I had to write it down then, not because the memory was still fresh from the blood soaking ground but because I knew that when my turn came (which would eventually happen) I would be too busy working on my resume and have no time for any of this.

CW once asked me, ‘Wouldn’t you rather have chosen to major in English Literature than in Engineering or Physics, had you been given the opportunity to live it all over again?’ Yes, I think I would. But I don’t think my life would be any different – I would have failed in that career as well, probably even more miserably.