Guilt Trip and Meal Ticket

Well Monday was the first morning back after finding out about the first cull just before the one week shutdown. More details have emerged, and it seems my team didn't escape at all. There are 3 teams in the S60 departement (I am in Audio) and their managers were each told to loose two people. Each used the tried and tested last in/first out method to determine the casualties, and I was second last in. Oh dear... but, it turns out that the manager in overall charge of the three, overruled my manger due to my application development experience. He thought this would be a useful skill to have on the team, even though they deal in middleware and drivers. So the next one down the chain was - my mentor. This was broken to me and my mentor at the same time in a short meeting to discuss defects. My mentor had only been there one month more than me and wasn't really a mentor at all in the usual sense, as he knew pretty little too, but it came as a bit of a shock both in terms of the delivery and the reason. I am now effectively mentorless as I cannot bring myself to keep bothering him with questions when he and I now know that I have got his job. He was off this afternoon for an interview, so I do hope he's successful. It also means that I am very definitely staring at the guillotine myself, as everyone else left now has significantly more experience than me, and I doubt I'll get the same rub twice.

I found out why the original plan for the shutdown was brought forward by one week, which undermined my flight ticket purchase. It was just for the cellular products group's benefit, and the rest of the site is off this week as originally planned, and that unfortunately includes the canteen. What do French engineers do when the canteen is closed? Do they bring in sandwiches? Do they bring in tupperware boxes full of last night's chilli? Do they fuck - they go out every lunch for a three course meal with wine, and take two and half hours over it! I'm not sure my wallet can stand a whole week of this, but what the hell, it's fun, and it reminds me of Minder on the Orient Express, where an English detective makes a sarcastic comment to his French counterpart about another investigation only being started after a three course meal. It's another classic and true stereotype :-) Today was the third day of this extravagence, and the organisers of the events have now sussed that they can negotiate discounts for taking 30 people en masse to a restaurant for lunch. I did notice the beaming smiles on the restaurant owners' faces myself on the previous two occasions.....