Layoff Lowdown

Let me pink slip into something more comfortable

After all these years of the economy going up and down, I have a weird economic indicator for the health of a business sector - tips. Ask the waiters, waitresses, bartenders, parking lot attendants, and other people who make their living from tips how their business is, and you will get some insight into the state of the economy.

When people are afraid, they stop making discretionary purchases, and they tighten up on tips. This stage is when layoff rumors strongly circulate within the companies or the industry, but the general public has not heard anything about it yet.

Downturn Vanities

With the recent onslaught of layoffs, I've been calling up friends in the trade to see who is still working, who is getting a pay cut, and who has become a consultant since I talked to them last.

The psychology of people experiencing "the current downturn in the technology sector," or whatever we're calling it this week, is interesting to me. One of the advantages of old age is that you know that you didn't die the last time the economy took a nosedive; otherwise, you wouldn't be old, would you?

What I find strange is that a solid majority of developers whose jobs are threatened would rather be fired than take a pay cut. If you expected to get a good severance package and find another job whenever you wanted to, this mindset might make sense to me. But the truth is that the money will run out and you will have no benefits while searching for work in a tight job market. Ego or vanity might be a bigger factor than I thought.

These days business happens at the speed of light, to paraphrase Chairman Gates. You can drop a huge percentage of your workforce in one afternoon via email and password changes. I've always thought that sending out a pink slip via email was daft; whoever receives that email still has a valid account on your system!

A Toast to Unemployment

But the pink slips do go out, and the first wave of people leaves the company. In my day, the survivors had some survivor's guilt, and they would throw a farewell party, or at least buy drinks, for their fallen comrades. These parties would briefly boost the level of tipping.

But the kids losing their jobs today don't have the time for either survivor's guilt or a farewell party. For one thing, too many of them are getting canned at the same time, so nobody is left to pay for the drinks.

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Yes, individuals will go out on a toot to drown their sorrows, but one or two people aren't enough to make the car payments for every waitress in town.

What the kids today do have is the "Pink Slip Party." A recruiter finds out which company is laying off people, rents a restaurant or bar, and offers snacks, beer, dancers, a big screen television, pool tables, and whatever else it takes to attract the recently unemployed. Your invitation is a copy of your termination notice, hence the title. The serving staff at these parties gets another tip boost, but probably from the recruiters and not the attendees who are there for all the free drinks.

Finally, the employment situation stabilizes and the tipping patterns do the same. The crisis is over. If you think this theory is nuts, ask the staff at restaurants in Austin, Texas that used to get a lunch crowd from Dell Computers.

Joe Celko [71062.1056@compuserve.com] is an independent consultant in Austin, Texas and the author of Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL Programming (Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1999).