My Rantings and Other Non-Sensical Thoughts

It's come down to this. After five and a half years with EarthLink, they are shutting down our call center. I can't say it's totally unexpected, although I held out hope until the end that we would be spared. I've experienced 100 different emotions today, going from FUCK YOU to I can't believe you're doing this to us and then back to FUCK YOU which is where I am now. I gave my BLOOD to this company and they don't care. I thought this was a company that cared about their employees and when it was MindSpring, it did. When we got sold to the devil, that all changed. Core Values & Beliefs? Ha.

I defended this company until the end. It's funny how quickly and completely I can change my mind. Now I have to sit there until March 14 putting on a business as usual face, knowing that everyone's counting the days.

The thing that makes it worse for Dallas than the other centers closing (Sacramento, Seattle, 1/2 of Pasadena) is that on Saturday, one of our representatives, who'd been with the company for almost 3 years died of a massive heart attack. Allergic reaction to medication. He was 33. We informed the reps on Monday and then today they were told they won't have jobs after March 14.

We are getting severance packages and we can collect unemployment. Ok - gloves off, I have to get this off my chest:

FUCK you, EarthLink. Good luck with outsourcers who don't even know how to read a fucking invoice, with outsourcers who tell customers they can have free 800 service if their POP is down. Good luck with the already 60 minute hold times that can't possibly get lowered after this decision. Good luck transferring web hosting & domain registration to centers that have never had these beasts before and don't know what the shit to do with them. Thank you for "rushing" to make the announcement to us which the board just approved this past Thursday. I'm sure the rushing was to inform us instead of making sure you could do the press release the day before financials are out. FUCK you to the people who made our stock go up 30 cents after the announcement. Before, I would have been like "cool, stock went up", never realizing the human impact. Now I do. 1300 of us are out of work. A good percentage of us gave our *ALL* for this damn company.

Business is business. What a cowardly statement to stand behind. You're going to save 20 million by closing us all, but you'll probably LOSE 20 million when you can't figure out the web hosting and when you lost more customers due to hold times.

I'm sorry - I'm really bitter right now. I hear Patty on the phone with her hubby and I think she's bawling. I wish I could hug her and tell her it's going to be ok like she did to me, but I really don't know if any of us are going to be ok. I know that I will be hard-pressed to invest so much of myself in another company.

posted by Chris O. @ 1/28/2003 07:33:00 PM