I’m worried. You may have heard that my brand new company is preparing to reduce 10% of their workforce by the end of the year and while I don’t have any specific reason to fear that my position is on the chopping block, I don’t have any reason to think it isn’t either.

Why would a company hire a guy and then lay him off a few weeks later? Well, I hope they wouldn’t, but since these layoffs seem to be based on positional elimination rather than merit-based consideration, it could be as simple as someone saying, “This group was important before, but we decided their work could be done by someone else.”

The worst part is that usually I don’t fret too much about layoffs. Normally I wouldn’t really care. Fine, fire me, get me severance and some time off to find a new place. I can get a job, I think even in this economy. People always need Ops guys. Someone’s got to make sure these systems stay up and running. They don’t get to fall over and drop service just because Wall Street is hosting the Greed/Remorse Olympics this year. The problem now is that I love this job. Reading Valleywag you’d think people were tying nooses in their cubes, but everyone here has been warm and helpful and positive in the face of some pretty tough situations.

I’m worried not because I’m scared I’ll be unemployed but because I’m scared I’ll lose this job. It’s still early to make these kinds of calls, I know this. But after two companies whose products and culture failed to interest or engage me, I feel home at work more than I have since late in my tenure at the City of Tracy. Which means, sadly, this is the first time since then that I felt like leaving there was the right decision.

So yeah, I don’t want to leave, but there’s nothing I can do to convince them to let me stay.

Something Happier

By popular demand (ie Ryan keeps pestering me) here are my opinions on the new season of TV. I haven’t watched nearly as much as in previous years, so I’ll also roll my opinions of the returning shows into the thoughts on the new ones.

• Fringe – I like the show but I missed the first few episodes due to a TiVo programming gaffe. I watched a couple later episodes and decided I liked what I saw but was frustrated enough to not make it appointment-TV. I figure I’ll let it play out and if it survives a whole year I’ll catch up on DVD.
• Raising the Bar – Something od about my taste: I think the “Law” parts of Law & Order shows are the best parts, but I have yet to find a show exclusively about lawyers that doesn’t make me want to jam a rolled-up legal pad through my nostril and into my brainpan. TNT’s new vehicle for Mark-Paul Gosslear’s hair is no exception and I couldn’t even make it through the pilot.
• Gary Unmarried – Going beyond the usual pain of awkward anti-chemistry in a new sitcom cast, the writing was flat and the premise was weak. I made it through the pilot but couldn’t make it stay in my Season Pass list.
• Do Not Disturb – Worst. Manmade thing. Ever.
• The Mentalist – Far and away my favorite new show, it took a bit to get over the fact that it’s just USA’s Psych without the father and not played for laughs, it manages to take the intriguing premise of Psych and do away with that version’s show’s disposable nature.
• How I Met Your Mother – The curse of the early season on HIMYM remains with the first few episodes being a bit weak, but the most recent near-wedding episode was fantastic. This show is far better than it’s relative obscurity suggests.
• Heroes – I could write a whole essay on what’s wrong with Heroes, but if you happened to catch the recent Entertainment Weekly cover story on it, they touched on most of my complaints: Life or death stakes are a joke, the time travel plot device has (as predicted) derailed both the best character and the overall story arc and each time the show starts to display some promise it bungles it with lazy writing and the typical traps that plague most network TV shows. I’m committed until the end of the Villains arc, but if it doesn’t get a whole lot better very quickly, I’m out.
• The Office – Still funny, still appointment-worthy, it seems to struggle a bit under the weight of its Jim/Pam legacy. As Nik pointed out, there would be nothing wrong with having them just be happy for a while in the backseat but the need for writers to constantly create conflict when none need exist is casting a grim shadow over the slow progression of the season and I fear a carnivorous aquatic creature hopping moment may be imminent.