Sunday, August 06, 2006

Sunday

The e-mail overnight from hubby says he'll be home in the middle or towards the end of the upcoming work week. Sounds good. His company seems to have made some personnel changes while he's been gone. Rumor is, from another engineer there, that he has a raise coming now. That'll be nice, especially since he hasn't had one since he went to work for them 3 years ago.

My hubby works for a section of a very large international company. The section he is in isn't a big part of the company and it was recently sold. The new owner is an interesting man, according to his biography. He is of Iranian background but became a citizen here years ago. He is very wealthy, naturally, and has lots of ties to world leaders and all that. He is a former diplomat for the U.S. and currently lives here in Houston. It'll be interesting to see what all happens. The deal was finalized a couple of months ago so he's the man now. All ready the secretary that helped the engineers is gone and the guy in engineering who dealt with coordination of assignments is gone.

It's always the office personnel that are the first to go, isn't it? I worked in offices most of my working life and office workers are the ones making the world turn, in my humble opinion. Without office personnel doing the day in and day out of the most mundane of tasks, whether it is time cards for payroll or office memos for bosses, the world of commerce would come to a screaming halt. It's just a fact. The faces you see working in the company office are viewed by management as necessary baggage. Baggage, I say, because management doesn't really want the expense of good office workers and office workers don't produce in a concrete way for the bottom line of the financial statement. A manager can't look at a monthly statement and see profits made by office workers but can for sales personnel, for instance. But try running that company without anyone in the office.

If you are an outside sales person or a potential job applicant, do you know who is the most powerful person in the company? The front desk secretary or the receptionist, depending on the set up of the office. If that person doesn't connect you with the appropriate person within the company, you don't exist. I learned many years ago while I was running the front desk for a Fortune 500 company in Dallas that this position is a maker or breaker for outsiders.

It's an interesting dynamic.

3 comments:

Me said...

Just swinging in to say 'hi'. :)

Jennifer said...

You are dead on accurate with every word of this post.

I recently had a conversation with someone who told me that if you weren't in the core of the company you work for - i.e. the billable workers - you were expendable. "If you want to be in marketing, go work for a marketing firm," was his advice. I hate to admit it, but he was largely right.

srp said...

It always makes me nervous when a company changes hands. It never benefits anyone except the original owners.