Terminal Case

Well, it's been a good run. I've worked for the Company Which Dares Not Speak Its Name for three and a half years. And it was good. But the end is near. My call center is going to be closed down at the end of December and operations are being moved somewhere cheaper. It was a great job. Our company has offices all over the country, and we were off by ourselves in our own part of the country, in our own small call center, free to do our own thing. And we did our own thing well. More details on that later.

What really makes this hard is that we are being kept in the dark about all of the details surrounding the closing. The corporate higher-ups don't even know that I know that it's going to happen. The corporate higher-ups, I am sure, have only a vague idea of who I am anyway. I have informed all of my agents, however, to give them a jump start on finding new jobs.

The end has been in the wind for quite some time. Last year at this time, the company cut 10% of the staff across the country, and my boss was one of the victims. He found a new job in the same line of work and, as such, had access to enough information to be able to tip me off to our imminent demise a few weeks ago.

The funny thing is that during that past year there has been a massive construction project going on around our building that has slowly been encroaching on our space. Our parking lot is a sea of dirt and mud, construction vehicles block all the parking spots, and the building shakes with vibrations from all the pile-driving. The front entrance was sealed-off a year ago, so we enter the building through the back. To top it off, all the other businesses in the building have gone. We can't help but see the whole thing as a metaphor for the demise of our call center.