I signed!.... Now what?

It feels a little anti-climactic doesn’t it?  You rage-signed the card and punched send or you talked up the courage, took a deep breath, then tapped ‘signed’ and now….nothing.  

No fireworks, no parades, no ConocoPhillips gestapo banging on your door….. just silence.  Hey!  Don’t fret, the wheels of progress grind on but it’s just not all in the open. Just like how SAP notifications take forever to grind their way through the system, our cards are the same way.... damn planners! Just kidding. We were the first wave hitting the beach, and we’ve established one hell of a beachhead, now we hunker down for the counter attack and wait for the second wave to wade ashore.  That second wave will be getting off the planes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and will be as fighting mad as we are.  In the meantime, we defend our beachhead and keep each other cool.   Pat’s letter was a good laugh ya?  That added some nice levity to a tense week.  We felt special for the free shoutout for our lil’ website, that was nice of him.   

Obviously management has been out in force the last few days being ‘present’ and having “open honest” discussions, this is step one in the counter-attack.  Expect a few weeks of good-cop bad-cop routes from them and some really touching gestures.  They are going to “slip up and share confidential information" with you, they’re going to tell you how much they sympathize with us and how they would’ve done it differently if it was up to them [but darn it, it’s not].  They are even going to make some concessions; say things like “we took your advice to upper management and really asked them to re-evaluate this and we have great news-  you can still blah, blah, blah [insert your own token here].”  Who knows, they might give people 3x3 schedules back, or bump the new hires up an extra buck or two, or give a lead position back but don’t be fooled, its all just opioids to knock the wind out of us. Remember workforce engagement and our 3% raise last year? Of course you do.

Here is a [not] funny history lesson for you:

In WWI trench warfare troops used to sling-shot canned food over to the enemy trenches if they knew rations were really short on the enemy side- word would get out after a few tins of canned meat came flying over, soon there would be a mad rush towards the cans as soon as they were launched… then the crafty bastards would sling-shot over a live hand grenade. You can kill a lot more people if you trick them into running towards your grenades rather than away from them. We dealing with the same type of shit.  Don’t think for a second that a single management ‘tool box’ talk is anything other than an intel gathering operation and a pacification campaign.  When those slick bastards come to talk to you they are going to ‘genuinely want to hear you out’ and “do the best we can to address concerns”.  Ask a question if you want but then do this:  Stay quiet and actually listen to their response. Don’t argue with them or try to convince them of something, just listen.  Did they actually answer your question?  Or did they just string 600 words together and make vague references to “upper management”, “metrics”, “yet to be evaluated”, “more information to come moving forward”, “certainly a topic of great concern for all of us”...and so many more.  Did they ever actually answer your question?

Don’t fall for it, they’ll do everything in their power to keep us un-unified because they know that once we have unity we have a voice.  So back to the original question-  what do you do now that you’ve signed…. You wait.  We wait, and recruit.  Once again, patience is the battle cry of the day.  Wait for our buddies to clear the beach, wait for us to get our ducks in a row and wait for the next counter attack.

This week was amazing, absolutely amazing, as a result we get to move forward- but not yet.  Hold your ground, help bring your buddies up to speed and keep your heads down.  We’re just getting started.