Riffing on RIFs

From the gallows humor of old-school layoffs to the digital coldness of Zoom firings. A reflection on resilience, fear, and the strange gifts that follow.

A little foreshadowing … when I saw the C scrapped off the building. Created by the author, please be gentle.

“Better to have it happen when you are young, rather than 20 years from now.”

That was the emotional support I got when I told Dad I was laid off by educational publishers Holt Rinehart and Winston (Holt) in 1986. Holt was owned by CBS Publishing, which had both consumer and educational publishing departments. The Holt layoff came about nine months after the CBS Educational Publishing layoff of about 100 people - of which I survived.

The CBS educational gig was in Greenwich, CT, and my first full time job in the New York area. This was the era of Coleco, Atari, Apple 2 and we made software products for them like Dinosaur Dig and The Presidents. As a copywriter, I wrote fun, 24-page pamphlets so kids and parents could get more out of the software.

When I took the position, I assumed I was a few short years before making my way to 60 minutes. Alas, at the same time, the CBS Broadcast division was eliminating 700 jobs as cable gave people more viewing choices. Everyday, as I passed the newsstand, Daily Variety screamed, “CBS set to axe more employees.”

That was back in the day when you could use words like axe. Today we shun violent words for sanitized one like “reduction in force” or RIF. You get RIFed not axed. Separated not booted. Downsized – unless it’s a more Orwellian organization that has adopted “Rightsized.” As you can imagine it was not a happy time at work. Fear was around every corner.

Our department vice president asked those of us in creative services to come up with ways to boost morale. We decided on a pool to guess the date and time when our axe-day would come. I’m pretty sure that is not what he was hoping for, but really our choices were limited. Gallows humor was the right call; dates and times were flooding in. When a guess-date passed, the person looked a bit bummed out. (I can’t remember if there was a prize.)

Besides the Daily Variety headlines, there was other foreshadowing. When I pulled into the parking lot one morning, I saw a man on a ladder chiseling off the letters C-B-S from the stone façade. It’s a sign when the sign is coming down from the building.

Downsizing Without Dignity

Finally, axe-day came. All of us were assembled to stand up in the large foyer, wondering and waiting. Announcements began. “Everyone in sales – your job has been eliminated.” A gasp. And as we tried to comfort the people involved, the next whack of the axe: “Everyone in distribution – your job has been eliminated.”

I was too stunned to be nervous about my own fate. People hugged and people cried. I hadn’t worked there that long and there were so many people I only knew by passing them in the hallway. “Dick has twins heading to college,” someone said. “Art’s wife is sick with cancer,” whispered another. Spinning in place I became privy to each personal story, making the layoff more gut wrenching. I didn’t know them but now I did.

And then I heard “Everyone in creative services is eliminated – except Diane Burley.” People were congratulating me as they were trying to hold back tears. I cringed under touches and slaps on the back. I’m just a kid with a shitty $400-a-month apartment that backed up to railroad tracks. There were adults in this group with kids in college. People buying houses, people about to retire, wives who are sick. How does some faceless person sequestered somewhere decide the fates of so many, so impersonally?

I took my new position in the education department at Holt, which was located in mid-town Manhattan. All the products designed to entertain kids while parents slept were now being re-positioned as supplemental products for school text books. My job was to write instruction manuals and teacher learning materials. My stay of execution lasted about nine months. Long enough for me to have moved from my Connecticut apartment into a sublet in Queens, which shortened my hour and 45-minute commute.

There was no foyer this time. My role was eliminated in a team meeting. When I finally write about a##hole bosses, I’ll write about Peter. But in those days, I had two weeks to gather my thoughts and belongings. It’s not like that any longer. Now you are escorted out immediately – and locked out of all computer systems.

Zoom, or its equivalent, seems to be a rising new method for laying people off. Unless you were one of the tens of thousands of government workers impacted by job cuts, buyouts, and other planned reductions in the first six months of 2025, many of whom learned of their layoffs by email.

Premature Elimination

But Premature Elimination can foul up the works. Many government workers’ digital access was eliminated prior to receiving notification of their lack-of-job status. I knew that feeling of digital erasure all too well.

It’s a cautionary tale — one I lived myself during my penultimate layoff five years ago. On a Zoom, as I heard the words that my position was cut, the meeting ended. I sat back grinning. IT disappeared me prematurely. My cell rang. It was my boss — ex-boss now — calling to finish laying down the axe.

While making dinner this week, I was listening to an interview between

Tim Miller

of The Bulwark and

Terry Moran

Moran, newly released from his ABC contract. When asked how he felt, when he realized he lost his job, Moran said, “Terrified.”

I stopped chopping and replayed it again. With all his successes he felt fear. Moran is an accomplished broadcast veteran who could fire up a Substack and have 100,000 subscribers almost the same day. (In fact, in one week, June 11-June 18, he amassed 109,000 subscribers.) But then I thought of my father’s words. Terry, age 63, had been with ABC almost 30 years. That’s a lot of layoff practice he missed out on.

Still, whether 25 or 65, it never gets easy. No one is ever ready to have their lives turned upside down; their healthcare eliminated; their work friendships severed.

But to Dad’s point it is better to be laid off in your 20s. I realize I have 40 years of material to write about—and perhaps a bit of wisdom to help others navigate their own storms.

I’m sure you have them too - I would love to hear how you weathered a layoff - or supported loves one who found themselves in the midst of one.

The Dignity of Labor

In 1893, Leonora Kearney Barry Lake gave a talk at the World's Columbian Exposition, in Chicago, on The Dignity of Labor in Theory and Practice. As I work on a book project about her, it’s a subject I come back to in many of my pieces.

Once again, Leonora was ahead of time, looking at the irony of how goodness is associated with work - but workers are often looked down upon. In her words:

“Writers of ancient and modern times, whether in poetry or prose, in referring to labor, have always quoted it as being "noble, holy and dignified.” … Labor is dignified only when the laborer is self-respecting and respected ….

Alas, how different do we find the practice! The nobility and dignity of labor are lost sight of because those who employ look upon it as only a means whereby they may reach the object of their ambition.

What I Am Reading

Not reading this week - am listening to Kazoo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, a first-person narrative about a butler touching on the topic of workplace dignity. I want to love audio books, but I don’t respond the same way. I want to do this beautiful narrative justice by reading it. Next book: a birthday present from my brother, The Spirit of Buffalo Women, by Rick Falkowski, about prominent women from Western New York.

Explanation for That Primitive-Looking Image

I am hearing so many people say they hate AI image generation. I must confess, I was excited to generate something I thought was new, followed a certain style, and wasn’t stock photos. But I understand that it lacks the heart of an artist rendition. I’ve been taking photos or grabbing art in the public domain. But sometimes they don’t fit the need. I don’t have the deep pockets to create bespoke art, so twice now l have swallowed my dignity and put pen to paper. The one above is indeed very raw, I hope it conveys the memory I have of that day.

And, who knows? maybe with practice, one day I will improve.

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Why Workplace Goodbyes Hurt So Much