Timing is Everything

So now that I’m unemployed… oh yeah, the rest of this story informs that statement.

It all started with the Browns in Pittsburgh this weekend. Everybody expected a blowout for the Steelers but when the Browns went up 21 to 9 in the first half the football world was shocked.

The second half was another story, though. Pittsburgh changed up their gameplan and aside from some spectacular special teams returns by Cleveland’s Josh Cribbs the Steelers made a comeback to win 28 to 31.

Now I have a pretty healthy rivalry with most of my now former coworkers, the majority of whom are huge Browns fans. So I sent a text message to Bryce, the biggest of the Browns fans, saying, “I’m fired aren’t I?”

It happens that my previous week at work I was struggling to find things to do. Nothing was really coming in, though on Monday in the first five minutes I was bombarded from several angles on things that needed priority or more immediate attention.

But it was at around four o’clock Bryce asked me to meet him in the conference room. “This has nothing to do with the Steelers and the browns,” he said.

What happened next was an explanation for why I haven’t been busy the previous week. In his words, “I blame the sales team”. You see this company has two products. First there is the courseware, flash-based corporate training on various topics; and Learning Management Systems, the hosted website that houses the courseware and maintains records for the client.

The sales process has required my involvement recently. Instead of just selling the product based on its merit, I would get a requirement document for a client with a basic outline of what was to go into this “Demo” site and I would then build it for each potential client. Thus I am now spending my work time building products that are not generating revenue.

Last week when even the requests for demos went cold I was a little bored at work.
So after waking up from a mid afternoon nap at about 2:00 today I started looking for jobs. In about 2 hours I had updated my resume and gotten 3 interviews set up with recruiters. I figured that was enough productivity for one day for a guy who’s unemployed.