Long and Winding Road: Team Event and Frantic Post-Layoff Activity

The past week was another circle of hell, except that I liked the fellow spirits in it.

*

On Monday the managing director of the part of the company I'm in had organized a company hike in an area on the outskirts of Berlin with which he is familiar. Generally quite dignified and not at first glance the practical sort, his careful attempts to venture beyond his usual scope of work were touching and well-received.

We gathered at an S-Bahn station, ready for the sortie, in good spirits — some of us hadn't seen each other in person for two years, and besides a whole contingent of American colleagues had arrived either the previous week or over the weekend.

It was a generously sunny day, in the most lavishly scaled part of old imperial Berlin, and the forests beyond were promisingly green.

Our principal challenge that day, aside from getting there, was that our managing director is a former amateur soccer player who I think made it into the second German national league. He still keeps up athletic habits and jogs considerable distances. His idea of exercise is, in short, somewhat heroic.

At any rate we walked along the streets, then a forest path, with good cheer; we survived a steep climb with zigzagging and rustic wooden stairs made of irregular logs and roots and sand, where colleagues kindly pitched in to help me carry my bicycle up an incline that seemed rather heart-attack-inducing; and at the end we reached the top of the hill and had a great view of Berlin, from the Television Tower and the Die Welt balloon, through the Olympia Stadium, through industrial buildings and a few fuming chimneys, to the matchstick-like white figures of windmills in rural Brandenburg all around. There was a great carpet of forest on the next hill we were scheduled to climb, but until then we took group photos of each other and of the skyline, chatted, etc., along with other sightseeing groups on the grassy dome.

The path down was bumpy, sandy soil interrupted by bricks and squiggles of what looked like rebar or stainless steel. As I maneuvered my bouncing bicycle down it, one of the teammates in the American branch and the managing director as well as other colleagues evidently expected to see me pitch head-first down the slope at any moment. But after that came tranquil level ground. The following uphill forest stretches I almost managed to tackle on my own before I finally gave up near the top of a slope. Four colleagues took over the portage of my bicycle (which was by then heavily embarrassing me), and then the managing director (whom I longed to relieve of my bicycle, but it was too awkward) pushed it the rest of the way.

We were just encircling the leafy crown of the hill along a narrow, trodden earth path at the crest of a slope that had the steepest incline yet, when a mountain cyclist who was extremely committed to his craft passed alongside us on an even narrower, outward path. We were all afraid he'd fall over before he finished passing all 40+ of us colleagues, but he clearly survived.

After that we scaled an asphalt-paved road and paid entrance to an old Cold War surveillance station at the top of the hill. The hill itself had been constructed by of the rubble of Berlin's buildings after the aerial bombings of World War II, although now it's knee-deep in trees and outwardly looks natural. The station is so glaringly obvious with its massive white spheres dominating the landscape, that colleagues could not stop wondering why it was considered an appropriate venue for covert espionage.

And then we had the run of the building complex, decrepit but tidied up, and draped in careful graffiti artworks, from political commentary on Israel and the US to a tribute to a young man who had died. On the roof we ate the lunches we had brought along, everything from cheese to granola bars, took photos, and chatted.

At first sight, the exterior staircases had felt like madness after all the other climbing we'd done. But as the other colleagues had made it, we followed suit. One American colleague who hadn't had anything to eat yet went rather beyond her strength; I heard her mutter to herself 'Don't look down; don't look down' as we scaled the metal stairs with no backing to the steps, and thin rails that didn't impede the view down the four stories. I joked to her and two or so other colleagues that we'd been signed up to a fitness boot camp without our knowledge, and they all were half-amused, half-felt that it was almost true.

The American colleague, looking very pale, was sitting with a sympathetic other American colleague underneath a tree below the building, when my sister and I walked back down from the rooftop. She had hailed an Uber, and soon a handful of us had walked the rest of the way to the entrance to the hilltop, and were waiting with her there beside a motley assemblage of fitness equipment. By coincidence two other walkers had hailed another white compact Toyota via Uber, so she thought her ride had already come; but the driver practically ignored her and then two tourists bustled past into that car.

I chatted with the colleagues there, also after the American colleague's Uber had arrived and she had absented herself with the plea, 'If the others ask, tell them I stayed strong!' Eventually the rest of the company arrived, we made group photos, and then we went on an endless-seeming walk back to the S-Bahn station. The endless-seeming walk was still nice; I think somehow we also all appreciated the time to talk with each other, the feeling of being in nature and not in front of our computers, and the way the managing director had planned for us an experience that was not about a fancy big budget or perks but just about the essentials of restfulness and 'togetherness.' After that, my sister and I cycled home together.

I had the afternoon off because I'd asked for the holiday, but a few other colleagues of course were working hard the rest of the day.

*

So that day was nice, but it was a lot of physical exercise. Then the pressure to go into the office was strong because my team was going to have an 'on-site meeting' with my sister's team on Tuesday. Which meant another 9 km of cycling in the morning, finding my bearings in the office, and having absolutely no time to work on the tasks I'd meant to do.

I did all of the cycling to and from the office, and survived the stress of having it be implied that I was exaggerating the susceptibility of my team to sudden changes during Black Friday season, because it suited me to do so.

Then I went to a team event. My team ordered considerably more food and drink than I'd expected, so I couldn't cover the cost on my own (even though I'd brought along 270 Euros, borrowing those 70 Euros from the household kitty even though I dislike doing so) and I had to ask a teammate to lend 80 Euros. We also exceeded the Berlin team budget considerably, although hopefully the American team still had money left over, so I'm not sure if my expense reimbursement request will be flagged as unreasonable. My bank limit for the week was nearly reached; so when I tried on Friday to withdraw the money to pay back the teammate, I ended up withdrawing 50 Euros only.

The team event itself was nice: we were all gathered in an outdoor restaurant garden except for my jet-lagged brother who understandably excused himself, the team put together a lovely birthday card for me, and we ate delicious Greek food.

On Wednesday evening I worked massive overtime again, but still made it almost to the tail end of a company event at a beach volleyball court. All the food had been cleared away, but alcoholic and non-alcoholic beer remained, a few colleagues were still playing foosball or table tennis, and quite a lot of people were chatting away at picnic tables underneath a wooden pavilion. I talked briefly with a fellow team lead and my direct manager, but then left again after a round of goodbyes with teammates current and former, and with the head of HR of our part of the company.

After tough weeks informing people not just from our part of the company but also the parent company, of the details of their layoff 'package,' or perhaps just physically exhausted from her volleyball games, this usually quite spry and ebullient amateur basketball player was slumped at a picnic table, cigarette in hand, looking tired. She's on holiday this next week.

On Thursday I was in a terrible meeting with my direct manager and two client-facing colleagues and my American manager teammate. Everyone except my teammate proposed that we would basically refuse service to many clients during Black Friday shopping season. This went strongly against my professional ethics. Besides I don't want to keep being stuck in strategic meetings when I could actually be handling our Black Friday season workload. And it made me worry that my relationship with colleagues might be souring.

I had a headache after that meeting. Besides I've been so shocked still by the lay-offs, so overburdened by work, worried about the effects on my looming performance review of my disagreements with my direct manager while at the same time angry about the positions I'm being put in, and so unable to sleep without dreaming about the job, that I was in no condition to make any decisions. But now that so many impulsive decisions were being proposed about fundamental aspects of my team's work, I felt that I was trapped into not being able to take holidays for the foreseeable future.

My mother had gone shopping earlier that day, and had kindly offered that I could have some of the chocolate that she usually buys for guests. Seeing how deeply stressed I was by the end of the day, she amended that to, 'All right, never mind — take all the chocolate you want!' My sister came over to visit and we had a vigorous debate until midnight or thereabouts, and then chatted as a family until after 1 a.m.

On Friday I went into work again because I wanted to repay the teammate (partly), help out with work for a difficult client, and see someone in person who'd wanted to see me in person. The 9 km commute with my heavy laptop was exhausting again, and I barely got any work done again, but it was nice being in the office with the team and my sister. Besides I had a good, air-clearing conversation with my direct manager, who also feels that too much is going on considering that we're still supposed to be given time to recover from the layoffs.

At the end of the day, when almost everyone had left except for M., who was busily clearing up the dirty dishes from a massive cake eating event, I put leftover cake into a doughnut carton to take home, and then T. and I cycled off together. (Another 12 km, but it was enjoyable until the last hill or two.)

In short, even though there were many good bits to the week, I think there was a lot of what I'd qualify as low-level psychological tormenting. Also, a lot of colleagues were out sick and 'out sick' (i.e. sick from stress, I imagine) once more. I'm beginning to be in the mood for crusading wildly for the rights of us workers again.