Those were the days
Jul. 6th, 2006 08:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enteleinhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Communications
I was part of the Global Center side of things, just a few months into getting hired to work as a sales assistant. I had a laptop. I took the train downtown just south of the river. I remember in the colder months the wind was merciless during the short block and a half walk I had to the door.
There were coolers with sodas and juices, and racks filled with candy and chips, in the kitchenette/workroom area. The office was still mostly dark - we were finally looking to build a datacenter downtown, and we'd be the kids to maintain it and sell it to capacity, so we were still hiring and organizing our workspace. Some of our biggest decisions at that time had to do with where to put the whiteboards.
Shocked into dot-com preening I was, to see a paycheck that so seriously eclipsed whatever I was making working 4 or 5 jobs previously (Barnes & Noble cafe manager/receiving room, coaching speech team, substitute teaching, photographer's assistant, small acting gigs like haunted houses) that I bought myself a Sega Dreamcast. I would order canisters of crystallized ginger directly from The Ginger People, to keep me from getting bored and grabbing Yet Another Packet of peanut butter crackers from the kitchenette. We also had meal perks - we could trundle on down for breakfast and lunch at Cafe Bacci, simply signing a piece of paper at the register as our payment. I liked their salmon special.
I remember making an Alice in Wonderland-themed journal design for Melissa, when I had to cover the reception desk, and got semi-reprimanded by some sales dude for working on something that looked fun. I remember having so very little to do. I remember raiding the file cabinets for GC swag. I still have a bunch of pens and keychains and mini clocks and a leather portfolio, embossed with the corporate logo.
Expense reports. Traveling to Orange County for training. Staying in a hotel. Conference calls with annoying queue music.
And then, we got bought by Exodus. And we all got flown out east to Herndon, VA, where we stayed at a nice hotel, and where we sat in conference rooms all day and learned how our new company worked. We viewed endless PowerPoints with the numbers blotted out. NDAs we signed because we weren't Official yet. The night we learned that the merger was a success, we were eating over-cooked appetizers in the hotel lobby, drinking as much as the free bar would let us. Us sales assistants clustered together and wondered what would become of us. All the Org charts we'd seen had no mirror image for what we did.
Feeling a bit redundant, I retired to my room, where I dragged out the laptop and lost myself in reading other peoples' stories. The next morning, turning the TV to CNN, I was shocked at how much of the news of the business world was familiar, and relevant. I knew names of CEOs, now. I knew which companies where which, and how (generally) they were faring on the stock market. Fucked Company was surreptitiously buried in my bookmarks. How did that happen?
Once home, there was even less to do at the office. They (even though Exodus had become Us, they were still They) wanted me to come to the corporate HQ to work. So, I did. And our little downtown-elite group stood in a sterile office block in Oakbrook, Illinois, an hour and 15 minute commute by car from the city, and we had nowhere to sit. Eventually, someone found rolling chairs, and placed us at these horrid plastic call center cubicles which were dusty and had no connectivity via phone OR network. We scrounged analog lines from somewhere, and logged in to retrieve work e-mail over VPN. I think we were pretty good at pretending for a week or so that we had Important Transitional Tasks. I got to fly out twice to the Bay Area to work on getting files prepared, since our client base was huge, and the former HQ had an enormous paper trail to manage. I met Daniel Handler at a reading in San Francisco, right before Lemony Snicket became huger than huge. I expensed sushi, and a rental car. Coming back to Illinois felt like putting some sort of mechanism in motion, something that was entirely beyond my control.
I started finding excuses to work from home. I resented having to drive out to the suburbs, when one of the reasons I took the Global Center job in the first place was to reduce the environmental impact I had, and use public transportation for work. I missed my Herman Miller chair and my cube next to the window, looking out over the Chicago River. I missed that slightly-goofy guy that served up the salmon at the Cafe every week, and the way he'd flourish the sauce over the fish and rice. I was worried that somehow, this would always be the way.
My team was laid off in May of 2001. There was some severance.
I think it's on my mind because my brother and I were driving around all over the place over the weekend, and we happened to drive past an Exodus data center. I remember when it was first built, and we took the tour. The walls of the lobby were lined with kevlar, and the glass of the security booth could turn aside bullets. To enter the cages, you had to step into a pod, have your hand scanned, and your weight taken (to prevent you from sneaking out with servers tucked into your trousers, I guess). It's a massive building in the middle of an industrial area. For some reason, at the time, we weren't supposed to really talk about where the building was, which was totally ridiculous because you could take one look and figure that a data center was one of the few things it could be. What with the massive A/C units practically covering the entire rooftop and all.
Anyway. I was a dot-commer, man. It was nice for a while.
I was part of the Global Center side of things, just a few months into getting hired to work as a sales assistant. I had a laptop. I took the train downtown just south of the river. I remember in the colder months the wind was merciless during the short block and a half walk I had to the door.
There were coolers with sodas and juices, and racks filled with candy and chips, in the kitchenette/workroom area. The office was still mostly dark - we were finally looking to build a datacenter downtown, and we'd be the kids to maintain it and sell it to capacity, so we were still hiring and organizing our workspace. Some of our biggest decisions at that time had to do with where to put the whiteboards.
Shocked into dot-com preening I was, to see a paycheck that so seriously eclipsed whatever I was making working 4 or 5 jobs previously (Barnes & Noble cafe manager/receiving room, coaching speech team, substitute teaching, photographer's assistant, small acting gigs like haunted houses) that I bought myself a Sega Dreamcast. I would order canisters of crystallized ginger directly from The Ginger People, to keep me from getting bored and grabbing Yet Another Packet of peanut butter crackers from the kitchenette. We also had meal perks - we could trundle on down for breakfast and lunch at Cafe Bacci, simply signing a piece of paper at the register as our payment. I liked their salmon special.
I remember making an Alice in Wonderland-themed journal design for Melissa, when I had to cover the reception desk, and got semi-reprimanded by some sales dude for working on something that looked fun. I remember having so very little to do. I remember raiding the file cabinets for GC swag. I still have a bunch of pens and keychains and mini clocks and a leather portfolio, embossed with the corporate logo.
Expense reports. Traveling to Orange County for training. Staying in a hotel. Conference calls with annoying queue music.
And then, we got bought by Exodus. And we all got flown out east to Herndon, VA, where we stayed at a nice hotel, and where we sat in conference rooms all day and learned how our new company worked. We viewed endless PowerPoints with the numbers blotted out. NDAs we signed because we weren't Official yet. The night we learned that the merger was a success, we were eating over-cooked appetizers in the hotel lobby, drinking as much as the free bar would let us. Us sales assistants clustered together and wondered what would become of us. All the Org charts we'd seen had no mirror image for what we did.
Feeling a bit redundant, I retired to my room, where I dragged out the laptop and lost myself in reading other peoples' stories. The next morning, turning the TV to CNN, I was shocked at how much of the news of the business world was familiar, and relevant. I knew names of CEOs, now. I knew which companies where which, and how (generally) they were faring on the stock market. Fucked Company was surreptitiously buried in my bookmarks. How did that happen?
Once home, there was even less to do at the office. They (even though Exodus had become Us, they were still They) wanted me to come to the corporate HQ to work. So, I did. And our little downtown-elite group stood in a sterile office block in Oakbrook, Illinois, an hour and 15 minute commute by car from the city, and we had nowhere to sit. Eventually, someone found rolling chairs, and placed us at these horrid plastic call center cubicles which were dusty and had no connectivity via phone OR network. We scrounged analog lines from somewhere, and logged in to retrieve work e-mail over VPN. I think we were pretty good at pretending for a week or so that we had Important Transitional Tasks. I got to fly out twice to the Bay Area to work on getting files prepared, since our client base was huge, and the former HQ had an enormous paper trail to manage. I met Daniel Handler at a reading in San Francisco, right before Lemony Snicket became huger than huge. I expensed sushi, and a rental car. Coming back to Illinois felt like putting some sort of mechanism in motion, something that was entirely beyond my control.
I started finding excuses to work from home. I resented having to drive out to the suburbs, when one of the reasons I took the Global Center job in the first place was to reduce the environmental impact I had, and use public transportation for work. I missed my Herman Miller chair and my cube next to the window, looking out over the Chicago River. I missed that slightly-goofy guy that served up the salmon at the Cafe every week, and the way he'd flourish the sauce over the fish and rice. I was worried that somehow, this would always be the way.
My team was laid off in May of 2001. There was some severance.
I think it's on my mind because my brother and I were driving around all over the place over the weekend, and we happened to drive past an Exodus data center. I remember when it was first built, and we took the tour. The walls of the lobby were lined with kevlar, and the glass of the security booth could turn aside bullets. To enter the cages, you had to step into a pod, have your hand scanned, and your weight taken (to prevent you from sneaking out with servers tucked into your trousers, I guess). It's a massive building in the middle of an industrial area. For some reason, at the time, we weren't supposed to really talk about where the building was, which was totally ridiculous because you could take one look and figure that a data center was one of the few things it could be. What with the massive A/C units practically covering the entire rooftop and all.
Anyway. I was a dot-commer, man. It was nice for a while.
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-06 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-06 06:12 pm (UTC)You were in a bit deeper than I was. I was in the mix for like, 7 months before I got dumped out.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-06 03:08 pm (UTC)There they were, sitting in the boardroom at the venture capital firm, talking it out. They had serious doubts about whether this was, in fact, a good idea. But they were so comfortable. It was those chairs, man. The longer you sat in them, the better everything seemed to be. I mean, how could anyone be skeptical or negative about anything when they are seated this comfortably?
no subject
Date: 2006-07-06 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-06 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-06 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-06 03:49 pm (UTC)Man, I liked being unemployed.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-06 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-06 06:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-06 07:55 pm (UTC)They had beer runs on friday nights, Big plasma screens showing CNN, etc. I happily kept my comparatively not so well paying job at the lazy B. There were quite a few IT guys jumping ship for the doomed homegrocer.com and such companines. I kept getting asked why I didn't.
I would remeber a turkey day dinner with friends one of whom was the spouses cow-orker and her saying wow it is nice to have an actual few days off and not have to work saturday or sunday and think okay I may not be earning as much but you know I like that unless there is some major server emergency I go home at the same time every day, I know I have the weekend off, etc.
The wife did get a good severance, they had to give 90 days notice because of the number of layoffs or some such. She was told to just pack up and go but would still be on the payroll, and got 2 months severance as well.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-07 12:58 pm (UTC)Craziness.