In 2008, the majority of employees at Dell’s Ottawa call center got their walking papers. In June of 2009, the rest of them followed suit. And here in March of 2010, Convergys gets ready to feel the pinch. I wrote about it before, when I first read about it. Now, though, it looks like we’ll be seeing a pretty significant change from business as usual when a door closes in the faces of several hundred employees.

Ottawa City council passed a motion just days after the cuts were announced, urging city staff to enter talks to see what might be done to keep the jobs here.

A few days later, a conference call between city people, the Contact Centre Association of Ottawa and provincial and federal bureaucrats was held. It was decided that they needed to find out more information from the company about the skill level of their staff.

Well now. The city never offered to get involved when Dell closed, nevermind the provincial or federal governments. Although to be fair, it doesn’t sound like Ottawa center management has altogether much faith in its front-line agents in the first place, so perhaps that’s the difference.

Paul Carr, operations manager for Convergys in Ottawa, tells CTV “close to 200 people have already left Convergys. Six hundred are still here and about 200 will still be working here after the cuts.”

Carr actually expected more would have left already, but people in the contact centre say these are not the most highly-trained people and so job options are rather limited..

Now now, that wasn’t very nice, Convergys staffers. Even if it might be true–hey, I’ve seen the results of some of Convergys’s training; I get to say that. Besides, it’s my blog.

Good to know the city’s finally thinking about doing something though to at least compensate folks for, or help them to deal with, the layoffs. How why didn’t that start happening two years ago? Anyone know?

I finally got a chance to sit down this morning and check my email, after making several dozen laps outside with the dogs–sometimes, house sitting’s quite inconvenient. When I opened my email this morning, a nifty little gift was sitting there waiting for me. In the form of an email from the People Bank, one of the temp agencies I threw an application in with in the early stages of last year. I initially thought it might be a long awaited job opportunity. Or another interview. Or something of that kind of goodness. It would, after all, be the first such opportunity any of those agencies actually contacted me with in, like, ever. Nope, guess again. It was an email asking me if I was still looking for work, still busily unemployed, and still wofully unskilled for any of their 6 degree required positions. Naturally, I am in all 3 categories. So I told them as much.

But now, I just have one small, minor little question. I applied with this particular company in, I believe, February or March of last year–possibly a little earlier. They hadn’t contacted me with anything more than an introductory interview in that time. A year plus later, and I get a standard “Are you still available?” form letter. Meanwhile, at least three jobs have probably passed through that company that I could easily do in my sleep. Their reasoning? They want a current resume. Why? To upgrade my skills. Um. My skills, and resume, haven’t changed. So, um, what?
I like the concept behind temp agencies. But, I’m learning, the actual interactions with temp agencies? I could probably do without.

About 6 or 7 months ago, I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Convergys, an outsourcing company who at the time was handling a contract for AT&T. I didn’t end up taking the opportunity, however, on account of they were very up front about having absolutely no plans for doing, pretty much, anything I’d need them to do in order for me to work there. Like, for instance, installing a screenreader so I can actually use their computers. About that long ago, I stopped thinking about them. And on Tuesday, the office where I would have been working tossed all but a hundred of its employees. Suddenly, I’m actually kind of glad we parted company after our initial conversation. Otherwise I might very well still be exactly where I am right now. Except maybe on employment insurance. Thanks but no thanks–did that dance already. Oh, and as for where those jobs ended up going? You guessed it–overseas. On the up side, at least we’re helping their recovery.

As of about 11:30 last night, mom’s surgery was done with and she was doing well. Actually, in my father’s words she was going back to her room and straight to bed. Which, to me, means she’s just fine. They’ll find out today exactly what they found/did/things and when it is she’ll be going home. Again, though, they’ll probably end up releasing her today unless there’s some major funkyness going on. Not that the last 3 days haven’t been some major funkyness, but hey, everyone’s definition’s a little different.

In lighter news, and news more relevant to me specificly, my first job application of 2010 was finally filed last night. It wasn’t anything overly earth shattering. Another customer service job with Rogers Communications, our equivalent of Comcast and AT&T combined. I’ve applied with them several dozen times already, although the last time they actually thought about getting me in for an interview, so we’ll see what happens. In the meantime, I’m keeping my eye out and hoping like hel Ottawa gets a few more tech jobs. What with all the office closures and massive layoffs in the last year or two–Dell, the local outsourcing office of Sytel, and more recently the layoffs and eventual bankrupsy of Nortel–they could use a few dozen. HP has an office there, but if you’re not bilingual you’re not qualified, so we’ll just pretend like they don’t. In the meantime, it’s quarter past 5 and I should be sleeping. Will I? Hmmm. My money’s on probably not. Hello again, screwy schedule.

In 2008, the Dell office in Ottawa I was working at shut down, giving its employees a bit over a month’s notice. In early to mid 2009, my father’s job with a transport company went from under him as the company itself ended up being bought up. On Friday, my mother was informed as of the moment she was told, she no longer had a job at the local hardware store. And today, I got to learn my uncle, who’d been working at a local vehicle repair shop for at least the last year or two, also no longer has a job. All of these signs the recovery we’re being told is heading our way isn’t actually here yet. fortunately, there’ll always be a demand for mechanics, for technicians of a computer and otherwise variety, for truck drivers–my father’s already found himself a better job than he had. But when of all places, losses start to hit a small-ish city like Pembroke, you know there’s problems. And at times like this, I’m reminded of something I’ve said more than a few times, even before the recession. Economics suck. Plain and simple. And sometimes, they like to remind you they do.

For approximately 24 hours, I flirted with the prospect of maybe having something that vaguely resembled employment when I got back from Rochester. I received an email from what I assume is an HR person from the Canadian Automobile Asociation (CAA), specificly their north east Ontario branch, requesting an interview. I’d had one with them a bit over a month ago, which ended up going not entirely badly. I figured this would be about the same–possibly a little better, depending on whether or not they were considering it my second in the series of interviews they typically do pre hiring. Since she didn’t say, I assumed she didn’t but there was that possibility.

There was just one very small, minor, niggling little problem. I’m in Rochester until the 24th of the month. Not against my will in the slightest–one tends to be a lot more willing to do things like that when one’s significant other has a crapload of events coming up over the course of the next week or so. The problem arose when I brought that up to miss interview chick. She had her heart set on interviewing everyone, in person, this Friday. And she wanted to interview me, in person, this Friday. Not opposed to that, I told her I’d love to–but I’m out of the country so could we do it by phone instead? Apparently not. “I prefer to do interviews in person,” was her officially and formally written way of telling me it wasn’t really open for negotiation. She included a halfway attempt at appeasing me by offering to try and squeeze me in next week. I told her again, sure, but we’d have to do it over the phone. I got another diplomaticly written response this morning, which escentially translated to thanks but no thanks.

Folks, I’m not hard to work things around as long as I have adequate notice and am not in the middle of other, more important things. I’m not even opposed to shuffling things around so I might be able to fit some new engagement or priority in at near last minute–provided the shuffle won’t result in more of a headache than just leaving it alone. But for all my flexibility and ability to actually survive a schedule that changes more often than I change my socks, I still can’t appear to be in two places at once. If in the course of a conversation I inform you I can’t do what you want when you want due to unavoidable physical limitations–such as, for example, my inability to fly from here to Ottawa for the interview, that should not translate to my saying I’d be more than happy to rewrite a week of already made plans for the sake of what may amount to a 20-minute interview. If I can’t show up until the end of the month, I can’t show up until the end of the month. If there are alternatives, and I provide them, I’m no longer the reason things didn’t get accomplished if you then refuse said alternatives. I prefer to do my interviewing in person too. However, that wasn’t an option for this one. Inability or unwillingness to adapt on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine. Now, then. Where’d I put my other applications?

I keep threatening to do that post about what the hell happened to me since the last time I was actively blogging (Um, LJ-ing, perhaps?). Well, consider this my attempt at doing so. I’ll warn you in advance there will probably be things that get missed–it *has* been about 4 months, after all.

For starters, there were more than a few trips across the Canada/US border between myself and Jessica, who’s rarely updated LJ is over here for anyone who doesn’t already read her. Things in that department I don’t think can get much better. Well, beyond the elimination of the border but eh, that’s coming. Beyond that, I’ve been doing a lot more experimentation with Gentoo, my for the moment linux distribution of choice. I’d messed around very briefly with Debian and Ubuntu, but couldn’t get quite what I wanted out of those distributions. That, plus I rather like a challenge and Gentoo definitely provides that. I kept an old HP laptop around for the purposes of experimentation–and, actually, it was the same laptop I did most of my blogging on in the old days–so I can break it 6 ways from Sunday and not really be set back more than a couple hours’ tinkering. Works perfectly fine for me. In addition to that, I’ve been continuing to pound pavement in hopes of landing me a job. Not an easy thing to do when every day the unemployment line gets longer, but we manage. This in between trips to catch up with family, because… well, you know, they don’t tend to like it when you avoid them for long stretches at a time.

Then there was the move. I’d spent the last year and a half or so on employment insurance while I looked for work, thus enabling to keep my rather nice–even if I do say so myself–apartment in Ottawa’s west end. Not having found anything though, it became necessary for me to find somewhere else to call home lest I end up going very broke very quickly. So, on October 23rd, everything I own and a few things I forgot I owned got stuffed into one box or another, and carted an hour and a half away to this, a basement apartment who’s upstairs neighbour has perhaps one of the creakiest floors I’ve heard in my life. Now, I’m still looking for work, still finding time to do a little geeking, and still–at least, as of about 2 weeks from yesterday–making trips across the border when I have the time, money and transportation. Not a whole lot has changed, save for my mailing address–which I’m still finding things that didn’t get the notification of that change–and the fact some things in life just plain aren’t as convenient as they were a month ago. But, win some, lose some. That be life.

Once I have the space in this apartment, and everything I’ll immediately need to do so out of boxes and set up, I plan to get back into tweeking the laptop and making things work just that much better. And, with a little luck and a small miracle, it might result in me accidentally coming up on a skill or three I can put in a resume. Never hurts to say you can do something, particularly when that something didn’t require you shell out money you don’t have for a college/university education. Of course, if I don’t get that out of it, then maybe I’ll just have a computer I can use should I ever decide to wipe windows off this one. Either way, I can’t find a down side here.

Well, that’s the summer and part of spring in a nutshell. Not very exciting, just… chaotic, really. Semi-organized chaos, but still. And if this is any indication, the next couple months don’t plan to be any different. Which, surprisingly, is how I like it. Can’t very well go researching new and somewhat impressive things to buy if you don’t have time to, after all.

After Dell’s closure in June of last year, I’ve been devoting much of my time to trying to find something remotely resembling work that I can get into. I’ve had several interviews, but that’s usually about as far as they go. I have another this wednesday for the CAA–I’ve had conversations with them before, so this shouldn’t be entirely too difficult.

I attribute part of my amusement at an observation I made yesterday to boredom, and perhaps to being still a little overtired, but a random stat circulated around Ottawa news outlets yesterday morning put a somewhat ironic smirk on my face. In the month of October, 800 full-time jobs were created. But yet, in that same period, unemployment went up by almost half a percentage point. Guess I’m gonna have more competition for that position than I thought. And the search continues.