Today during the day shift (I get all this stuff when I stumble in at 4pm) there was a large meeting in which it was announced that effective immediately, there were to be no more "fun potluck fridays" which were a kind of tradition around the building. I myself was never social enough to really get into the communal sharing of food items, but I usually showed up with a few bags of chips or something. You know how you feel guilty chowing down on somebody's brownies that they brought if you don't contribute something.

Anyway, those days are over now, apparently. The reason? Apparently there is just too much work to do!

After all, the higher ups are very insistant that we get everything caught up (im not sure what date we're on now, but I think we're processing a few months behind at this point. FAR more caught up than they were before all of us expendable temps were hired) by the time the corp takes over.

And I guess the once-every-couple-months potlucks were really cutting into crunch time.

You know what else were cutting into crunch time, and are now gone?

Meetings.

Seriously. There are no more meetings. Ironic that they called a meeting to announce that there would be no more meetings, but there you go.

I don't know if all meetings are gone by the wayside. I doubt it. Team meetings are fairly vital. I have a feeling the ones that are not going to occur anymore are the ones where they call everyone together all at once and make general announcments, and hand out certificates of achievement and whatnot. These are the meetings that in other businesses would be called "morale builders."

I have a certificate myself from one of these. Its a single sheet of laser printed paper with baloons on one side and a lot of words on the back that basically amount to "good job."

Im not sure these building-wide meetings will be missed, but I know some of the kids got a kick out of em. I guess morale isn't so important when you know that you're not going to be there in six months.

Here is the funny thing.

I can't speak for everyone there (even though I think I can. heh) but I know that I was hired in as a temp. I knew that I would be there for a year. There was always the possibility that my term would be extended (some of the people there now have been extended for years) but I knew that come the end of the year, I would more than likely not have a job. I came to grips with that when I started.

That being said, when you find out that indeed, you were not going to be extended, and you were in fact going to be either reduced to an "intermittant" employee who was required to call every week to see if there was indeed work, or just laid off all together, that kind of depresses you a little bit.

You become even more depressed when they no longer hide the fact that you're basically unimportant by getting rid of the "morale builder" meetings in which they tried to hide the fact that you're unimportant with copy paper certificates and verbal pats on the back.

You become even more despondant when they tell you that you're not allowed to have your little party every once in a whle on friday during which you pretended that work was sort of a fun place to be.

Don't get me wrong. Its not that I was under the impression I would have my "tour" extended. I purposely never assumed that would happen. I figured it was easier to prepare that way.

But it isnt much fun to be told that you have to hurry up and get your job done so that somebody else can take over.