Lee's New Job

He started yesterday. Boy, that was quick!

On August 2nd, Dell called a meeting and announced they were closing our local store/call center. It also happened to be pajama day (Lee was not wearing pajamas tho). The employees were given 1/2 hour to get their stuff out of their desks and hand in their badges.

There's been a lot of flak directed at Dell for the way this happened. Lee figures the decision was made about 3 weeks before they closed. Up until that time, they were still updating and improving the facility. Then suddenly all that was dropped.

People around town say there should have been some kind of warning. But hang on - what happens when you warn people in a security-controlled job? They get pissy and download something evil into your computers -- or they grab names & numbers of customers for personal use -- or whatever else nefarious things pissy people do. Unless Lee cleared it beforehand, I wasn't even allowed to walk in where the desks were. He'd have to meet me at the security desk if he forgot his lunch or something. That's just the nature of this kind of business.

And they did set up job options. In the termination packet, there were a few flyers for the job fair on the following Monday, which is how Lee got this job. The company he hired into was hiring 35 people right then, and then they want to hire an additional 100 people once their new facility is up later this month (Lee is helping set that up now). There were more trainings set up at the local college by Dell. There were a few other contacts for people to try to make the adjustment as well as possible.

And there was also a decent severance package. They are continuing insurance benefits for those who were covered for the next three months (we're under my insurance anyway). So there is a little time to try to move on to something else.

Since Lee got the job so quickly, we're actually ahead financially because of this. His income at the new job was based on his income from last year, which was a pretty good year for him at Dell, and they even rounded it up! And of course, we still have the severance coming too.

Why they closed our Dell we may never know. Was it the lawsuit started at our Dell regarding the overtime nonpayment (their arguement was that it was commissions or something)? Was it because the peripherals (cameras, printers, etc.) weren't selling as well as they'd hoped? Was it because HP cut into their market too much?

Lee was actually enjoying his job, but he was kind of stalled. There wasn't any benefit to becoming a manager, since sometimes your team didn't perform as well as they needed to for commission bonuses. People sometimes would go back to a job like Lee's because they earned more on their own.

I'm hopeful this new job is the start of something bigger for Lee. His actual title is "IT Manager" and they are supposed to hire in people for him to manage once they get into the newer location. I think he'll excel at this. It will be a challenge, but he likes challenges - it's a lot less boring! Go Lee!