Downward

To coin the phrase made famous by Brittany Spears, and then turned into a folk song by Richard Thompson:  Oops, I did it again!  Only 2-ish years this time instead of 4.  You never know, this might be the beginning of an ever-reducing series, which will eventually end up with a post on a regular basis.

Or maybe not.

Reading over my old posts is an interesting thing to do, as not only does it refresh memories of how things were, it also serves as a reminder as to how I got to where I am now, which in general is not a good place.

Having been bought out, moved, moved again and generally forced into trying to integrate the workings of an independent British SME into a large American multinational, our numbers have been so heavily reduced (through natural progression, no actual lay-offs) that we are now four people.  Four, where fourteen once were is utterly unsustainable.  It is often heard that companies have to "do more with less", but this level of cutback is just absurd.  There's no way you can be a £3M turnover branch of a company with Four people, especially when you're in manufacuring.  Specialist manufacturing, yes, but still manufacturing.  That would be revenue generation of £750k per person.  I know of no industry that can do that!

So of course we're not generating that.  We're barely generating £300k a year, which is pathetic compared to where we were 3/4 years ago.  I have been desperately waiting for the redundancy to come, but it hasn't and I don't think it ever will.

Asked to describe the effect of being adsorbed by a large multinational that hasn't the first clue about how to operate the company it's just bought, I would have to agree with the comment that it is like a Cancer.  Now, that is not to belittle anyone suffering with Cancer; it's a horrid illness which I would not wish on anyone, but as a description of a disease slowly works through a system and destroys it bit-by-bit, it's a very good analogy of where we find ourselves today.