Staying Afloat While Your Job Sinks

Those weeks or months before employees find out who will stay and who will go are tough, and they should be used to find that next great opportunity, as the employees at the Global Alliance are doing. But instead, said Robbie Miller Kaplan, career counselor and author of "How to Say It When You Don't Know What to Say," "they tend to bury their heads in the sand and say this isn't going to happen to me. Then they are unprepared when they get the notice."

After a long period of low morale and worry about whether a job will be there the next day, some employees beg off before they are told to clean out their desks. One Sprint employee volunteered to be let go after enduring a sort of job roulette, with the company announcing layoffs every three months or so, she said. She is still there, awaiting her final day. (She spoke on condition of anonymity because her parents don't know she asked to be let go. Shhh.)

When she told her team she had volunteered to leave, "they were happy for me," she said. "One said I found the spoon and dug my way out." It was as if she were the one who made it outside after a torturous sentence inside.

This is often the case for workers who know job cuts are coming but don't know who might be cut.

"There is definitely not the motivation to get in there exactly on time like before," the Sprint employee said. "But I don't want to dump things on other people. I'm good friends with these people, so there's that motivation to clean up as much as I can."

She is used to cleaning up after those who were let go. She has been with the company for eight years, and she has spent the past two wondering when it would be her turn. "In the office, it's just like, 'Oh, here we go again,' " she said. Her group is also moving offices, so people are packing their desks, not knowing if they are packing for a move or packing to go home.

Leaving a job isn't easy, nor is finding a new one. And support from co-workers caught in the same storm may make things a bit easier. But sometimes those people consider one another competition.

"We were all in the same boat, so really, it was like, 'I gotta find a job and I'm not telling you where I'm looking, good luck to you,' " said Cynthia Creelman, who worked as a sales analyst for a telecom company in Herndon until about two years ago. She also volunteered to be let go after her boss and most of her co-workers began falling victim to the pink slip at regular intervals.

"I honestly think most of the people in our company just kind of hid," she said.

Her company had merged with a much larger one. Goals changed constantly, business practices were turned around every other month. People with specific skills were let go, leaving their former co-workers to figure things out. "We spent our time just trying to catch the sky that was falling down," Creelman said.

Eventually, Creelman's boss said she expected both of them would be let go in the next round of layoffs. "It got to the point where you just did the minimal you had to do to get by. When I left, I probably wasn't working a full day," Creelman said.

In the end, her boss was fired and Creelman was spared. But she couldn't handle the disorganization, low morale and constant worry anymore. She volunteered to be let go about six months afterward. When her offer was accepted, she said she felt as if she had won the lottery.

And although her job search took 10 months, she did win the lottery: She left the sales world for a more creative job as a proposal coordinator with a multimedia company. And her work is just minutes from her home in Alexandria.

Back at the Global Alliance, when O'Laughlin had to tell her people they were being let go, it was not easy for any of them. But then O'Laughlin reminded everyone to "look at this as one event or blip in a lifetime. You either take advantage [of] that event, learn from it and move on -- or you drown in it."

Join Amy Joyce to discuss your life at work at www.washingtonpost.comfrom 11 a.m. to noon Tuesday. Have a column idea? You can e-mail her at lifeatwork@washpost.com.