I had an odd experience today at work and I thought I would share it.
I was at my client company sitting in my guest cube working on something. My guest cube sits in a vast cube farm filled with admins, marketing managers, directors, VP's and SR VP's. Anyway around 3:30 pm I hear audible (break my concentration) groans from one aisle over. On the aisle on the other side of me I hear a middle aged man saying loudly that he's "going to go downstairs and get ice cream who's coming." No it wasn't an overworked drone or Jerry Maguire declaring his independence from the man. It was a forty or fifty something VP and he was not talking about his work. "I've had it" he said. A co-worker proceeded to join him. As they walked away they were talking loudly with disgust about the stock market. In a cube next to mine some twenty somethings in a more conversational tone said that the market is tanking again. "Do you think China is laughing?" says one. "Nope their next." says the other. Within 5 minutes it seemed like most of the floor was talking in water cooler fashion about the stock market and its nose dive. Confusion and not a little fear seemed to be the subtext of these discussions. I am not sure if the VP's outburst triggered this socializing, but I definitely had the sense that everyone was checking their 401k every fifteen minutes and the pressure was building all afternoon. In some ways the spontaneous communal commiserating had echoes of 9/11. On an ordinary day, on a floor where the big shots and the worker bees sit together these sorts of spontaneous outbursts of shared anxiety are not typical.
Since my last post the market is down several thousand points and many major banks have folded or been acquired on the cheap.
So now I ask... does it get worse before it gets better?
I hope not.
I was at my client company sitting in my guest cube working on something. My guest cube sits in a vast cube farm filled with admins, marketing managers, directors, VP's and SR VP's. Anyway around 3:30 pm I hear audible (break my concentration) groans from one aisle over. On the aisle on the other side of me I hear a middle aged man saying loudly that he's "going to go downstairs and get ice cream who's coming." No it wasn't an overworked drone or Jerry Maguire declaring his independence from the man. It was a forty or fifty something VP and he was not talking about his work. "I've had it" he said. A co-worker proceeded to join him. As they walked away they were talking loudly with disgust about the stock market. In a cube next to mine some twenty somethings in a more conversational tone said that the market is tanking again. "Do you think China is laughing?" says one. "Nope their next." says the other. Within 5 minutes it seemed like most of the floor was talking in water cooler fashion about the stock market and its nose dive. Confusion and not a little fear seemed to be the subtext of these discussions. I am not sure if the VP's outburst triggered this socializing, but I definitely had the sense that everyone was checking their 401k every fifteen minutes and the pressure was building all afternoon. In some ways the spontaneous communal commiserating had echoes of 9/11. On an ordinary day, on a floor where the big shots and the worker bees sit together these sorts of spontaneous outbursts of shared anxiety are not typical.
Since my last post the market is down several thousand points and many major banks have folded or been acquired on the cheap.
So now I ask... does it get worse before it gets better?
I hope not.
