It's going down now

Feb 03, 2009 19:37

As I warned you earlier today, I won’t be home for dinner. At the rate things are going, I might not be home for breakfast. Don’t wait up. And don’t call the office. We’re closing down the phones and locking the doors right now, and the general meeting begins in a few minutes. All staff on deck. It’s going down TONIGHT. Blood will flow freely.

I’ve been mulling over the finalization of plans for a couple days. Don’t think that your input wasn’t useful; it was. But the details had to be set in my mind before today’s meeting, so I haven’t wanted to discuss anything since Sunday. You cannot feel shut out because I DID go over a lot of possibilities with you on the weekend. But the final call is mine, and I have to live with the repercussions. I’ve needed this solitary time.

The staff cuts are going to be fucking painful. Ever since there were only three of us - Ted, Cynthia and I - Kinnetik has never cut back, only expanded, branched out, burned up the competition. Now the competition’s hurting too, but that’s no comfort at all. Somehow I thought I could save Kinnetik. Guess I’m not nearly as omnipotent as advertised.

You know, and the staff knows (they always know almost everything it seems) that we’ve been losing clients left and right, because the clients themselves are folding. I no longer need a staff of 18. I have to pare down the budget by almost thirty percent. Since there’s virtually no overhead in this business, that means staff cuts. Major cuts. Ted and I have finally decided we must lay off five staff members (in addition to a 10 percent salary cut for everyone who makes more than sixty grand, myself included). This is how it works out.

It’s my decision to let go the most junior members of my staff. They’re young enough to switch careers, if it comes to that. Unfortunately, they’re also the lowest-paid, so it’s necessary to cut several of them because I can’t afford to lose my top producers. This means (as we discussed) that the art department is safe, with one exception. Can’t run an advertising business without graphic artists. The exception is Marty. I allowed Charley to select the one who has to go, and he says that Marty has not been pulling his weight, so the decision was not as hard as it might have been otherwise.

Ted is cutting one bookkeeper and one of his billing assistants. Ted’s going to return to doing some of the grunt work himself (he offered, it’s not a demotion). Cynthia’s personal assistant is going (and as you would expect, Cynthia is fine with that decision, she’s never been afraid of working her ass off). And finally, I’m letting Manuel go. He’s been a great guy-Friday, pitching in wherever help is needed, and Christ almighty, he’s worth keeping if only for what he adds decoratively, so to speak, to the office. What a package. But he’ll have to deliver that package somewhere else. Alas.

Justin, this is not the end of my/our financial problems. It’s inevitable that revenues will continue to decline at least for the immediate time. My stock portfolio has been reduced almost 50 percent, I have to entrench personally as well as at Kinnetik. Now, buck up. It has been fucking murder for me to make this next decision, but there is no alternative:

Either the Toronto apartment, or the Toronto gallery, must go. We can stay with the girls or at a reasonable hotel whenever we go up there - I am NOT proposing limiting our trips north. I know that you’ve been breaking even at the gallery, but you said yourself that sales have been nil for a while now.

J, I wanted to tell you this way, get it over with, before I have to go in and face my staff. I need to feel justified in the cutbacks by knowing that I (and you, unfortunately) have to feel the pinch also.

Pinch, hell! What a stupid euphemism for fucking up people’s lives. And they are all good people, most of them I even call “friend” (not necessarily to their faces, of course). Christ, J, this sucks, so fucking much.
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