Greetings from the Downsized
Some of you in the San Francisco community may have heard, but others may have not. Kink.com announced layoffs Monday — roughly 15% of its workforce. I was one of the casualties.
The largest cuts were in the Production group, including two webmasters. The impact of this on the company, I suspect, could not be overstated unless I suggested that meteors had hit the Armory, which as far as I know they did not.
I have been on both sides of “workforce reductions” before, and they suck for everyone. It will be very strange not going into the Puzzle Palace every day, but it’s stranger still to be one of the statistics of the slowing economy — if in fact I am.
For those of you in the SF area or who travel here, if you get a tour of the San Francisco Armory, in the future someone else will be giving it to you. Or will they? If Kink.com continues giving tours, I encourage you to sign up for one — it is a wicked building. Did you know there’s a freakin’ river in the god damned basement? A freakin’ river. Don’t go swimming, though, there are mutant alien space-spores and they’ll turn you into a swamp creature.
For me, it is always painful leaving a job I’ve worked hard at. But my job at Kink.com was so emotionally demanding that I’m looking forward to figuring out what my next step is. I feel like I have done a million things with my life, and none of them really add up to anything, and yet they’re all stuck together like flybones in a web, and to draw out any single thread is impossible.
I am too old to change courses and do anything respectable, so I believe I will stay on the disreputable path I have been practicing this far. I’ll have to stick with being a writer.
leave a comment