The pain of outsourcing

As a member of the upper ranks of corporatedom, I am among those criticized as being uncaring. It's believe that we CEOs seek out the almighty dollar and don't care about the little people.

Yesterday we had to tell 30 of our computer programmers that we were letting them go in six months and outsourcing their work to people in outer Estonia. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do and I tried to put as positive a spin on it as possible. Many of the 30 own several dozen shares of Cowcope stock, and so I stressed to them that this action would reap them positive rewards in the value of their stock. Wall Street, I explained, doesn't look kindly on a company that has been running 70% profit margins suddenly slipping to 65% profit margins. Darryl Yikeloth, one of the affected employees, had the nerve to get smart with me and blame the decrease on the government investigation into cases of flaky udder disease caused by our Cow headache drug Mootrin.

I know these guys are losing their job, but it isn't like we aren't giving them three weeks to find another job and 3 days severence for every year they worked. Plus, we're allowing them to continue their health coverage under COBRA. We even allowed those with the most tenure to stay on for an additional six months with the opportunity to fly to Estonia to train the new employees. They'll have the opportunity to travel AND learn a new language.

To let them know that I too am feeling the pain of the financial hard times we've fallen into, I've cancelled my limo service for the next 2 months and cut back to only three massages a week.