I try not to write about work. It’s a slippery slope that can be twisted around and thrown back at you when you least expect it.

Case in point, the first job I had where I had to enter end of day numbers into a Apple Macintosh II (you can guess the year), I decided to write a friend a letter on the word processing program. In the letter I tore into the management style of my boss and then went on to say how much I hoped that my friend and I could bump uglies soon. Hit print. Nothing came out of the printer. Yeah you guessed it – straight to the management office. At the time I didn’t know much about computers and didn’t glean that the letter was going to their printer (after printing off 3 copies) but managed to change the printer, get it, send it off and forget about it. A few days later I had my review (bad attitude, lazy work, no raise) and there was my letter, on the top of my file. I left a few days after that.

Okay that had nothing to do with my point, I just thought it was funny. But many harmless posts via social medias have lead to termination or insubordination letters. You have to use your head when you write.

But I’m compelled to bend that rule today and just say there’s been a lot of closed door meetings with HR and the accounting department (HR + Accounting, usually = Severance pay). To say I’m concerned is a bit of an understatement: middle management such as myself are usually the juiciest apples on the tree for pruning. I won’t go into the “why” of this feeling I have, just that I’ve observed some behaviour by upper management that resembles a loud talker on a cell phone while riding a bus, suddenly dropping their voice 2 octaves. We all strain to hear what we’re missing.

SharkBoy told me of one of his incredible flame outs he had with a past employer (which I’ll let you beg him for a blog post for) which had me thinking: Have you ever been fired? Let go? If you left of bad terms did you grab two beers and hit the chute?