2009 and Looking forward

I know  is a little bit late in telling everyone Happy New Year, that is because I was hiding under my desk.  Yes a New Year is upon us and I am still around. Somehow I survived 2008, but 2009 is a very large question mark.   has been receiving emails from people who have walked or was shown the door, due to new policies within.  I received an email from an ex-TAC supervisor. His email is quite long, but there is one point I want to share with everyone. It is interesting from a supervisor's point of view how they had to judge people. Please read: The recent lay-off at the TAC. I can tell you that each supervisor was responsible for monitoring negative behavior in regards to the new management and Urey wanted us to rating each employee from best to worse. Let me explain... So if you had a group of 1-25 associates someone in that group had to be a 1(best) and someone had to be a 25 (worse) and everyone between. We also had to monitor how many tickets were being closed per hrs for each associate. So this is how they determine who stays employed and who was let go. Now! This scale resets each year and you guessed it if youre at the bottom of the productive list or talked negative about Urey you WILL be let go next year. Needless to say even if you were a 1 or 2 but expressed your negative opinion about any of the changes you were on the bad list.  I received another email from someone that worked at UCS in the 80's - early 90's. Once again it is a very long email, but he has some very interesting comments. Please read: When I started there was around 200 people, with only one or two black folks. When I quit 7 years later, I forget how many employees, maybe over 400, but still only less than 10 black folks. They also only had a handful of Asian folks. Mainly white, but a good number of Hispanic folks, mainly due to the southeast Texas location, I guess. ....It was kind of cult-ish in some ways. Also kind of nazi/gestapo type techniques. ...This place was a prime example of a "good-ole-boy" ran company. You would do fine if you played the game, kissed-up, and acted like they wanted you to. Wear your hair right, wear the right suit, tie, and shoes, eat in their crappy cafeteria, play their buddy game, oh, and be a white male. Go on their hunting trips and whatever else good-ole-boy get-togethers thay have. Be a "yes-man" brown-nose and you will fit in perfectly. Wow, it's weird to hear how things never changed.  Very interesting insight, meaning this style of business goes back 20 to 30 years. I thought URey was supposed to be a company with forward looking vision.