Hard Work for Halloween

Halloween was a special day at NDC. In 2000, I was surprised at how many Supervisors and other superiors higher up the chain took part in wearing costumes to work. Two of the Call Center Managers dressed up like cowboys, the other Manager dressed up like Cruella DeVil and had two employees dress like dalmatians. The Director of Operations dressed like the Evil Queen from "Snow White." There was also a contest for the dispatch agents to take part in and prizes were awarded. It was a great day of fun at work.

That particular year, I wore a suit and had freshly shaved my head. (This was just after I had become the LDA and the team members had never seen me with REALLY short hair.) I also went around work without my glasses. It took many a while to figure out who I was. I looked like someone really important at the company. Even one of the Managers came up and tried to introduce himself before he realized it was me.

But this wasn't really a costume. I didn't do any hard work on it. But for 2001, I wanted to go all out. I decided to make my own costume. And I came up with one that I knew no one else was going to do. I decided to go as Guy Pierce's character Leonard from the film "Memento." I went to Kmart and bought a beige-colored sweat suit and white boxer shorts. The DVD had recently come out and I rented it. One of the extras was a tattoo gallery that showed all the tattoos. I took a black magic marker and recreated all the tattoos onto the specific areas of the sweat suit. I was going to wear the boxers on the outside so that I would resemble his appearance from the black and white sections of the film.

I was all ready to go for Halloween. However, on October 30th, something took place that sort of put a pall on the fun. All the Supervisors and LDAs were called into the conference room. One of the Managers and the Director of Operations had an announcement. We were told that the flex-time employees had all received notice that they had been laid off. We were all shocked. Someone asked if they were offered regular shifts. The Manager said that there were no shifts available. The flex-time employees no longer had jobs.

There were no flex-time employees on my team, so I never really knew how that worked. I did know that it meant that there were a few people who were going to be out of work and they probably weren't expecting it. I felt bad for them.

I wore my costume the next day. Everyone thought it was a good costume, but most of them hadn't seen the film, so they didn't totally get it. (I wonder if they get it now that Christopher Nolan is considered among the elite film directors.) But I noticed a few strange things that day. The first was that the Manager who dressed up as Cruella DeVil called out sick that day. Also, the other Manager and the Director didn't wear costumes. It was already starting to feel like less fun than it was the year before.

And the fun level dropped even more later in the day. The Manager and the Director called the Supervisors and LDAs from the Balboa side into the conference room. We were told that we were going to stop taking calls on the Balboa server effective immediately. That moment there, I felt downright stupid wearing my costume. If I'd known serious stuff like that was going to take place, I would have been better off wearing my suit again.

We went out and quickly told all the dispatch agents one by one that they needed to get off the phone when they finished their current call and find a station on the other side. While we were getting the last of them out, I logged on and took a couple of calls. To the best of my knowledge, I was the last person to take a call on the Balboa server.

The rest of the shift went okay. I posed for a photo to be used in the costume contest and went home at my regular time.

Late in the afternoon, I got a call from the Manager. He told me that I would need to be at a meeting at 10am the next day. He said they'd be giving more details at the meeting. I checked my work e-mail from home. A notice was sent out that the CEO had resigned, effective immediately. I figured this was what the meeting was going to be about.

After everything else that had happened that day and the day before, all the fun vanished from Halloween that night. I wasn't certain what to expect the next day.