Life at FCI Leawood-similar to Gateway in Sioux Falls?

How Sprint fires people

(
It was a thursday, and it was raining. I despise rain because my car
smokes terribly and I have to keep one window opened a crack. As I
accelerated, matters only became worse and soon I was both wet and
smoky smelling, but I was late and had little choice in the matter. As
I turned into Sprint Campus and waited in line for the parking garage
I passed by the "Ritz", the nickname for the incredibly fancy office
building exclusively for the VIP's. I thought, "I'll bet I lose my job
tomorrow, everybody's talking about it." Rumors had been circulating
for the past week that the axe was falling soon, and like in the
movie, "Office Space," it was common practice to have giant layoffs on
fridays.

My job as a data entry specialist (an embellished title for a
dissatisfying job) for Sprint PCS begins at 8:00 in the morning, and I
arrive at 8:03. Something that I noticed immediately was the lack of
"Hi!" "Hello!" "Good morning!" and "Looking forward to the weekend?"
that echoed throughout cubeland. In fact there was very little
conversation occuring whatsoever. There wasn't any ambient laughing,
and the smell of popcorn and coffee was all but nonexistent, creating
this eerie sensory vacuum.

The cubes are rather fancy at Sprint campus. They have a locking
closet unit where you can store your personal items, overhead bins,
drawers, a fancy Meridian phone and $200 ergonomic chairs. As I sat
down after getting my coffee, which comes from a rather fancy coffee
spout in the shining-clean employee break room called a "Pop site", I
noticed that my coworker, the new contractor from the same agency as
mine, wasn't there. She was always there at 7:30 am because she lived
close-by, unlike my sorry fourty-five minute commute.

I asked my boss, Jack, where my coworker, Sarah, was.

"Sarah's not with us anymore," Jack awkwardly replied, "Just go back
to work and don't talk to anyone about it."

"Why was she let go?" I pried.

My boss looked up from his keyboard, met his eyes with mine and
recited as if from a script, slowly and earnestly, "Sarah. Is. Not.
With. Us. Any. More." I froze for a second, like a deer about to be
smacked by a train, then scurried back to my cube.

At about 9:30 am, I checked the Sprint homepage for internal news.
We're encouraged to do this sporadically to see what's occuring in the
company. There was a letter on the top of the page from Mr. LeMay, one
of the vice presidents of the corporation, about "asset cuts."
2,100... Asset... cuts...

****.

The escorters began showing up at approximately 10:30 to begin
emptying people's cubes out for them. This happened all day long.
There were plenty of sad and embarassed looks on the faces of those
soon to be facing the unemployment lines. Most of my department was
quiety and subtley cleaned out, white unmarked box by white unmarked
box, by these men wearing dark blue uniforms.

At approximately 2:00 pm, I went to the rest room. When I came back,
there was a woman sitting in my chair, doing someting on my computer.
I had never met this woman in my life, and to see her in my chair,
working on my computer... needless to say was disturbing. I asked what
she was doing, and she replied, "Oh, I'm just updating your software."
I accepted that because I wanted to believe it.

At the end of the day I left as usual, and to my surprise the parking
garage was almost empty. I tried to start my car, but apparently I had
left the lights on all day and my battery was drained. I began to walk
back to the building to call AAA when, by coincidence, my boss walked
out of the front door.

"Where're you going?" he uttered with a startled look.

"Oh, my car's not starting so I'm going to ask the front desk guy for
a jump."

He paused. "That's okay, I'll just give you a jump."

So he jump started my car, which is quite a feat since the alternator
connection is a bit lousy, so it takes several minutes to get it going
properly.

I graciously voiced, "Thanks for the jump!"

"See you tomorrow, Mike, and get your car fixed!" he hollered as he
got into his car.

'See you tomorrow,' I kept repeating in my mind's eye, a phrase so
pleasing I couldn't believe it. Ripples of relaxation swept over me as
I realized that I still had my job, and arrogantly mused that I was
doing a better job than everyone else who was trodding out of the
building with forlorn looks upon their faces, carrying a unmarked
white box with their personal posessions.

I drove home through the Kansas City "Grandview Triangle," a nasty
stretch of highway that, with the slight drizzle of rain, caused the
traffic to slow to a snail's pace. Finally I arrived at home, got a
coke from the fridge and checked the answering machine.

"Mr. Alkav, we regret to inform you that your services are no longer
required with Sprint..."
It's been months and I'm still angry. They gave me that false sense of
security and then let me know I was fired through my damn answering
machine.



I spent almost 3 years working for Sprint - starting with a six-month
stint working at SprintPCS's world headquarters and followed by 2.5
years working for Sprint North Supply in New Century, Kansas. (This
division was not located at the "Sprint Campus" or Sprint World
Headquarters). I was there when WorldCom made its offer to purchase
Sprint and sent its stock price up to $75/share. Unfortunately, I was
also there when the deal fell through. In November 2001 during the
first major round of layoffs I watched one third of my co-workers get
fired.

Back in October of 2001 the telecommunications industry was in serious
trouble. Many of the players both large and small were either in
bankruptcy protection or very close to it. In my business unit we sold
telecommunications equipment to all of these companies and we had to
be constantly aware of their current outstanding debt to Sprint lest
they claim bankruptcy and get out of paying for the goods and
services.

The atmosphere in the company was very strained as it became evident
that the woes of the industry were eventually going to filter down to
all of us. There became much less work for us to do as our pool of
customers either disappeared or stopped building infrastructure.

My particular job I felt was largely safe because my division was in
charge of materials management in the building of cell phone towers
for SprintPCS -- which we knew would be able to get funding to
continue the buildout of towers for another year or two. They had to
in order to roll out third generation wireless (or "3g") which was
going to be necessary to compete in the wireless market. In any case I
wasn't happy at Sprint and half of me wished that they would fire me
so I could get on with my life.

It came as no huge surprise when everyone received an e-mail on
October 16, 2001 from Sprint's CEO Bill Esrey. He told us that very
soon 6,000 of us would no longer be working for Sprint and then at the
end of his letter: "However, these reductions, as painful as they are,
are essential to protect the financial integrity of our company, to
our ability to compete, to grow our business, and to meet the
expectations of our customers and investors. Through our more than 100
year history, we have met challenges and succeeded. It will be no
different in the future." Oh boy! Even though I'm not going to have a
job or be able to feed my family, I can rest easily knowing our
customers expectations are being met. What a joke!

Everyone became very nervous at this point. The extent of the job cuts
was much higher than anyone anticipated and managers became antsy when
they discovered that their jobs were even more likely to be affected
by the cuts. During the next several weeks people from the human
resources department were charged with the terrible job of finding out
who should get the ax. All of us had someone from HR sit down with us
and we had to explain to them what we did each day -- a most
frightening thing for many of my colleagues who really did absolutely
nothing productive because there literally wasn't enough work to go
around. People were hustling to take on as many tasks as possible just
to "look busy".

Two girls in my group were advised by our manager to "cross-train" and
learn what I did - but my work was in database administration and they
couldn't possibly learn to do it in two weeks (if ever), so I put zero
effort in teaching them my job -- and really why should've I? There
was no reason I could think of to teach people my job -- that would be
counter-productive to my own goals, which at the time involved staying
at Sprint.

In the first week of November we were told that within a few weeks we
would all find out our fate. The decisions had already been made at
this point on who was going to stay and who would go -- we just had to
wait to find out. Then November 13th came. In the morning all of the
managers and higher positions were called to meetings. Apparently
there were two of these meetings. One meeting was for the people that
were to be fired. Around 10:15am these people began filtering back to
their cubicles to gather their belongings. My immediate supervisor and
my manager were both ****-canned. Their boss and my director was also
fired (but he had apparently been told earlier the day before because
his office was already empty of all his belongings). His boss, the VP
of my business unit, was also canned. I had no superiors left in my
division except for the CEO of Sprint North Supply. It was odd looking
at the organizational chart and seeing nobody there above me. (Our
group worked without any supervisors for almost 3 weeks).

The employees had to watch as their bosses tearily packed their
belongings away and said their good-byes to people they had spent
their entire working lives with. I felt some sort of weird
satisfaction -- dare I say delight? -- in seeing my own manager fired.
I jealously watched her do nothing but surf the internet all day while
I frantically worked to meet constant deadlines. I was happy to see
the people of HR had figured out that she was worthless to the
company. I was saddened to see many other more worthy people that had
lost their jobs -- most of them with families, car payments, and house
payments. Some of these people were visibly angry and some were sad
and crying - but most of them remained stoic.

Around 11:30am approximately 1/3 of the regular staff received an e-
mail "inviting" them to attend a 1:00pm meeting. Most of them
instinctively knew that they were getting fired. Everyone went around
asking, "Did you get the e-mail?" A few of the remaining managers
consolingly tried to pretend that the e-mail could mean something
other than what it obviously was.

During lunch the people in the facilities crew started filling the
hallways with empty boxes - presumably which would be used by the soon
to be fired -- so that their personal effects could be removed. When
the boxes arrived it became painfully obvious what was going to
happen. The "reality" of it all was setting in.

During the 1:00pm meeting -- all of the people in attendence were
summarily fired. They each received informational packets that
explained the severance package, the continuation of health benefits,
and (almost humorous to me) resources for job-hunting. All of the
people had their security badges taken before they left and they were
told they had one hour to gather all of their things and leave the
building.

Around 1:30pm these people returned and told us all their fate. Some
people held up very well and other people couldn't stop crying.
Surprisingly to me was that they were each allowed this time to gather
their own possessions. I would have thought Sprint would have been
worried that they were going to lose some of their own property in the
mess -- one girl in our group cut the network cables on her computer
in one last act of defiance. Sprint may have lost a few pens and
staplers in the process, but I was happy they let people gather their
own effects and to say their good-byes. Sprint officials told the
remaining non-terminated employees that we were not to allow any
former employees into the building -- not even into the cafeteria for
lunch. That didn't sound too unreasonable of a security measure to me,
but it did present some odd problems. Many families had multiple
members that worked for Sprint and after the firings wives, husbands,
siblings, and children were prevented from entering the building to
meet with their family members.

I don't know how the other divisions of Sprint outside of Sprint North
Supply handled this first round of terminations, but from what I saw I
was very impressed with how Sprint handled the job. Apparently (from
michael_alkav's story above) Sprint has become more callous. They
could have and should have told him in person that his job was being
eliminated. It was very chicken-**** of them to do what they did.

My own employment at Sprint came to an end in February 2002. I had
learned in December and January that the entire database
infrastructure for the company was going to be converted from Informix
(which I knew) to PeopleSoft (which I did not know). As time grew on I
realized that I was helping them convert to this new system by working
with the PeopleSoft application developers, but they weren't involving
me with any of the PeopleSoft training programs. They weren't going to
keep me when they converted over!

I figured I could have stuck around and worked for another 3 months or
so -- and maybe I wouldn't have been fired -- but I wouldn't have all
the power and control that I currently had, because I was the only one
who knew the entire process of our group's business. I knew it forward
and backward and I was the only one in the group that knew how to cull
reports from the vast sea of data. Everything was going to change soon
and it was clear that my own worth to the company was going to be
greatly diminished.

In the first week of February I packed up all my belongings in
preparation for "the day". I took everything I wanted home. I made
plans to drive to Las Vegas with a friend of mine. Then on February
13, 2002 I finished cleaning up my computer. I removed all my personal
files and e-mail. I also removed the password locks on all the
databases that I controlled so that whoever took over my job would
have access to all the information they would need. I didn't destroy
any of my paperwork or any computer data -- I knew that would leave me
open to lawsuits -- and truth be told -- I wasn't really mad at Sprint
anyway. I just wasn't happy working for them anymore.

When I went to lunch at noon I told one person in the cubicle next to
me that I was leaving on vacation to Las Vegas and I wasn't coming
back to Sprint, ever. I was going to change my voice mail and e-mail
responder to let people know that they would need to contact someone
else, but I figured they would do that for me soon enough.

So, I just put on my winter coat and walked out.