Might Need To Move Up My New Job Timeline

For three of the four departments that I am trained in, we have a monthly meeting.  Well, we used to.  It's been infrequent the past, oh, half-year.  In fact, I don't remember the last time we had a monthly meeting.  These days, usually, my boss just sends out an e-mail saying our meeting has been canceled; anything he would say during the meeting could just be typed out in that e-mail.

But for his latest e-mail cancellation, he typed out something that really, really caught my eye.  Near the end of his message, he said: "Maybe next month I'll have something to say."

You know what I think he means by that?  We're all going to be laid off.

Look, I've been pissing and moaning about how my boss is micro-managing my hours to make sure I don't garner overtime.  But there has been a lot of cost-cutting and belt-tightening within the past, oh, year or so that I have finally pieced together.  For example, The Main Department has been whittled down to, pretty much, nine people every day; when I started work there, it was 15 or so.  There used to be three people in filing every day; now, it's two people three days a week and one person the other two (although someone can come in and help if the work needs it).  We get an e-mail every morning giving the number of forms that we need to deal with every day; it's not as high as it used to be.

Oh, and finally, after work yesterday/Thursday I have overheard that the person who works filing second shift is taking today/Friday off.  Usually that means that someone in first shift is asked to work second shift to cover for her.  Not this time; people in second shift have been told that filing will not be staffed tonight/Friday night.  I know that this person has taken the occasional day off over the previous several months.  And I don't remember the last time my boss has asked for people to substitute for her.

The god damnedest thing about all of this is that the work continues to get done.  We must have rocket-boosted our productivity because there hasn't been a new person coming in to any of the departments I work in in about a year.  And yet I still feel as if my boss and other higher-ups are scraping by and trying to find ways to cinch the metaphorical waist even further.

Hey, I might be paranoid and reading way too much into what my boss said in that e-mail.  But I don't like this.  I think I can see the writing on the wall.  And I say there is a non-zero chance that we will have a meeting next month where my boss is going to say that we are "transitioning" into other departments, but they will only need a few of us.

I have to freshen up my resume, for chrissake.