Weight Loss.
"Have you heard, the company is planning another mass layoff recently."
I was taking a cup of water from the pantry. There had been a sudden increase in the workload in my department this week, and it was only by taking that momentary break from catching water that I was able to take a break. I looked over at the voice and saw two employees, one old and one young, chatting away in front of the coffee machine beside me.
"Hey, here we go again," the middle-aged man who spoke sounded unconcerned, "Isn't that what the company's gossip says every quarter, and I've been with the company for almost twenty years, and I haven't seen when the company has actually laid off a large number of employees."
"But this time it's not so sure," that young employee said, quickly looked around, then lowered his voice, "I heard my friend in the business department say that the company has voluntarily given up a lot of long-term business this time, and instead started to contact a lot of business in areas it doesn't specialize in. I always feel that this time, nine times out of ten, it's true."
"Hardly... just you wait. For example, the boss of that snack food company has a good relationship with our CEO, even if they give up and re-cooperate again, it would be a matter of minutes. You've only been with the company for four years, this kind of thing has happened before, don't worry this fire won't burn on us."
I returned to my workspace after receiving the water, and non-stop began to deal with the work left over from the morning. Recently it should be the so-called layoff season, basically, all companies are facing mass layoffs. A parent company quietly laying off an entire subsidiary is always seen in the news, which has led to a very low atmosphere in the company, all are afraid that they will be the next to go.
My finance department has always been very important in the company, It's in charge of the financial flow of the company. But the subsidiary I'm in charge of is small, with few orders, and not a hit with the department, so there hasn't been much work for me. It wasn't until recently that it had skyrocketed.
I thought back carefully to the conversations I had heard in the pantry, and the end, the main problem that was causing the panic was the lack of circulation between the company's departments and the fact that layoffs were being made without warning. The result was that no one knew how many people would be laid off in total, and for what, all in one email. Lemmi, who is sitting opposite me, is packing up her desktop. She has just received the notice, and she doesn't even need time for the job handover, HR only gave her one hour to tidy up, and if she is still in the company when the time is up, the security will come.
Lemmi was sobbing quietly as she packed, but no one dared to come forward to comfort and talk to her. For one, it was a company rule, and two, they were afraid of getting in trouble and being noticed.
I didn't dare look up, the only sounds I could hear in the entire departmental office were typing and the winter heaters working.
Damn it, I took a sip of the water I'd just picked up to try and keep myself from locking eyes with Lemmi.
I wish this cold winter would hurry up and pass.
My original story was comparing weight loss to layoffs and fat loss to random staff turnover. In the grand scheme of things many companies are facing layoffs today and who knows who will be next. I was worried that there would be too many metaphors in the story, which would lead to a messy story line that might not tell the story well, so after thinking about it, I decided to focus the whole story on the theme of "layoffs". In order to make this somewhat serious story more interesting, I'm going to turn the random layoffs into a "company-organized ''Survival Game' event", where those who fail lose their jobs and those who succeed keep theirs. The simple story line is "Employee A is selected to participate in a "Survival Game" event and tries his best to survive.
There are 6 story scenes, 1: Employee A's office; 2: HR office entrance; 3: HR office; 4: Game Scene 1 (land); 5: Game Scene 2 (sea); 6: Game Scene 3 (ladder); 7: Finally back to 3: HR office.