that other guy’s thoughts

Thursday was easily the most anxious, awkward, and weird day of work I could ever imagine. To adequately explain the hanging tension, I need to get you all up to speed on the last 3 months.

In November, Cessna announced they were going to layoff 600 people, about 4% of the total workforce of 15,000+. It’s regrettable, but not cataclysmic or entirely unexpected. Those people got there WARN notices and told their layoffs would be effective by the end of January, January 29th to be precise.

Flash forward a month and half. We get a friendly little e-mail filled with annoying corporate jargon, but the gist was this, “Um yeah, about those layoffs…uh, I’m gonna go ahead and fire another 2,000 of you. Okay?…Um yeah, also we’re not gonna tell you who’s getting fired until January 29th, that way everybody is too worried an preoccupied to do their jobs properly.”

Flash forward again to this past Tuesday afternoon, all Textron employees got an e-mail informing us that all our hard work and goal-achieving last year will be ignored because Textron Corporate has decided to suspend all merit raises at every business unit for all of 2009. Hurray! I love losing the correlation between my pay and performance; I bet that will do wonders for future worker productivity! And because an impersonal e-mail is quite enough of a kick to the balls to the professional work force, a wonderful Q & A sheet was added informing everyone that 2008 Bonuses will still be paid to management. Awesome! Senior Vice Presidents get extra money and I get bled out by inflation. Sweet!

This brings us to Thursday morning, January 29th. 600 People are showing up to their last day of work. 2,000 people at the bottom of their respective totem poles have a feeling they’re about to get axed. It’s makings of a weird day already. Then people start showing up to work.

Waiting in everyone’s inbox is another e-mail with the dreaded subject line and insulting euphemism “Workforce Planning Update.” The unwelcome contents of this email?

“Surprise! We’re not laying off 2,000 people today, we’re laying off 4,000. Most of you will get fired in the next 2 hours, but we’re gonna stretch this out another couple weeks to make everybody else sweat a little more. Plus, anybody still left with a job will have to take mandatory unpaid furloughs starting in March.”

To top it all off, somebody decided to check out Textron’s stock price. The result? Down 30% for the day, capping off a wonderful 85% loss in the last year. It’s a good thing us worker bees don’t get paid in stock. Oh wait! The company matching portion of our 401(k) is 100% company stock that we’re not allowed to sell for 5 years! It just keeps getting more awesome!

By 10 a.m. the tone was set. 600 people on their last day. 3,750 people are out on their asses. 250 people are dead-men walking; they just don’t know it yet. Everybody else is worried for their job, pissed that they won’t get a raise, wondering exactly how long of a furlough they can survive without losing their house, and realizing that they may never get to retire.

Where does your humble TOG land in this mess? In the latter category at the moment, but I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

download The Projectionist movie

I feel a big ol’ political post brewing prior to next Tuesday’s election. But for now, dear readers, I give you a new stack of quotes courtesy of my Finite Element professor.

(as always, remember to picture a 46-year old Chinese man with a moderate accent)

“I told you to think about it, and did you? No. How do I remind you? Give me your cell phone number. When do you take a shower?”

“People say, “You only teach 6 hours, you have it so easy.” I say it’s not so easy, I have to figure out what to do with the rest of my time.”

Q - one - three plus Q - one - two is equal to Q - three. Did you guys know Dillard’s has 30% off today? My wife called to tell me that there’s no dinner tonight. Q - two - one plus…”

Everyone know the funniest professors are non-native english speakers. In that vein, imagine each of the following actual quotes from my professor as spoken by a middle-aged man with a heavy chinese accent:

“At age 20, you have a lot of strange energy but no money.”

“I want to talk to the girls for a second: You cannot find a guy you is rich, handome, and young, so you just pick one! Just like Ritz Method.”

“Think about your education. When you were in kindegarten, you watch sesame streee and they sing to you A-B-C-D! When you’re in elementary school, they didn’t sing anymore did they? It keeps getting steeper and steeper. Now you’re in AE 722 and I don’t teach! Ha Ha, joke’s on you!”

As I sat in the classroom today - utterly confused as to why a just and loving God would allow 2nd-order partial differential equations to be casually used on my second day of class - I couldn’t help but wonder what exactly I’ve gotten myself into.

This class started the same way as every other college class I’ve ever taken, with the professor half-heartedly attempting a lame joke followed by every student half-heartedly pretending to laugh at it. It’s good to see some things are universal.

The Wichita State graduate aerospace program is specifically tailored to the area working professional, (e.g. all classes are Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday between 4:00 pm & 8:30 pm) So I was a bit surprised to find that only 6 of the 37 students are returning professionals. Everyone else shows up dressed like they’re headed to a Jimmy Buffet concert. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I remember those days, and they were awesome.

Obviously, the math content for this class will be rough. Though this is partially my fault, since I don’t remember anything I learned past Calculus II six years ago. If we go deeper than what we brushed on today, I’ll probably have to pick up another textbook for some recreational mathematics reading. Be still, my heart!

Finally, I’d like to take a moment to personally address this state’s 3rd largest university:

“Really Wichita State, these are the best facilities you’ve got? 37 students jammed into a cinder block room with flickering lights and a worn out blackboard? My mental math skills tell me you’re pulling down at least $30,000 in tuition for offering this single 3-hour class. Can I at least get some air circulation to take the edge off the combined B.O. of the 20 Indians that surround me?”

I’m far too young to dread birthdays, but here it is anyway: I don’t like my birthday. I don’t like being the center of attention, I don’t like expectation of celebration or joy, I don’t like having the same conversation with everyone.

“How old are you?”…”What, only 25?”

But mostly, I don’t like my birthday because it brings into stark reality that which I have not done. Consider for a moment:

• Orson Wells was 26 when he wrote, directed, produced, and starred in Citizen Kane, probably the greatest artistic feat of the 20th Century.
• Michelangelo completed the Statue of David by 29.
• Issac Newton invented Calculus in head when he was 22. He also invented the reflecting telescope and discovered the nature of light by 31.
• Ayn Rand was 29 when she wrote “We the Living”

That’s just 4 off the top of my head, and I’m not even considering child prodigies like Mozart or 8-year-old Indian boys performing open-heart surgeries. I’m not hubristic enough to believe I could do any of those things by 85, let alone 25. But I think about these acts of excellence and awed by our capacity for great things. How do you possibly live up to something like that?

I’ve spent my entire life preparing for the future, now I’ve come to realize that preparation was impossible because success is impossible. You can’t “win” at life or “beat” the game. The only course is to reach for a piece of our latent capacity and to try.

So I find myself facing another birthday and celebrating another year of inevitably unrealized potential. Oh happy day.

On the other hand, maybe I should just listen to Katie and stop being such a pansy about getting older.

A: Because when you girlfriend says, “I have cancer” everything else seems a lot less important.

It is not your duty to keep the economy afloat. You were given the power to regulate inter-state commerce. The fact the Ricky and Lucy’s McMansion is worth less than they paid for it is none of your concern. But since this is an election year, your “brain trust” (I’m using quotation marks in the most agressive and sarcastic manner possible) has decided it needs to give me $600 to like them.

Well, I don’t want you damn money. However, knowing you as I do, If I returned the money you’d just fritter it away on some interstate highway rest stop named in honor of the Senator whom earmarked it. So, I’ve decided to invest in on your behalf, not on snazzy consumer goods or services to boost the economy. It’s going to sit in my boring savings account, earning a boring 4.75% interest. I do this so that when you need it to pay off the 10 trillion dollars in debt (plus $1.6 billion each day) you are burdening myself and members of my generation with, the money will still be there.

You’re Welcome,

Kyle

P.S. Now is the time you should feel guilty about spending like drunken sailors.

For the past 9 months, I’ve been stewing about a job change. I don’t want to change industries, profession, or even company. I want to try something new within Cessna.

I don’t dislike my work; crawling around on airplanes and telling people what to do is precisely my idea of a good time. I don’t dislike my boss; he’s a great boss, almost the perfect boss for someone like me. I don’t dislike the other engineers in my office; they’re all decent fellows and respect me. I don’t dislike the guys & gals on the shop floor, even when they hold secret grudges against me for doing my job. It’s tough for a 50-year-old man to accept direction from a 24-year-old kid; I sympathize with his plight and do my best to humor his humorous suggestions. I don’t dislike my company; they make very good airplanes, pay me very decent money, and do an adequate job of shielding us worker bees from the corporate overlord queen.

So why in the holy name of Office Space, would I want to change jobs?

Because that’s just not enough.

I’m too young and life is too short to settle. I want it all; I want a job that inspires my mind, I want a job that pushes be to better and smarter than I am right now. I need a job that is intellectually stimulating.

A plurality of my day, and indeed my life, will be spent at work. To ask and expect anything less than the whole banana would be to lessen the capacity of my human experience.

Earlier this week, I brought my mini-fridge into work on request of the newbie. Apparently, walking 30 yards to the break room for bottled water is too much of a hassle. I got free pudding out of the deal so what do I care?

During the transport process she (Yes, “she”, there are female engineers too, you stereotyping jerkface) asked me, “It was just sitting in your basement huh? Did you use it in your dorm room in college?”

There are dozens of ways to answer that perfectly benign question, explaining that I bought during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years when I first got possession of my own room at Triangle. I however, didn’t choose any of them. I choose the direct,truthful, and dismissive “No.”

It struck me as odd at the time. 3 days later, I still don’t have a reason why.

Fear not my breathren, I haven’t sold out. It’s merely another tool for me to use to turn my cult of personality into and army of darkness!

(also, totally add me as a friend, my list is sad and losery right now.)