Posted by Robin Bignall on 08 December 2000 at 19:53:34:
In Reply to: Thank you posted by Mike M. on 05 December 2000 at 13:10:50:
I think that the principles started going out of the window about 10 years ago. Very few, if any, of the people whom I knew who took various offers in the 1992/93 timeframe were actually given an option of staying until normal retirement age. I appeared to be one of the few who did want to stay, and I was devastated when, on returning after my 1992 Christmas vacation, my new first-liner whom I had never met before told me that my job had been eliminated. My second meeting with him three months later was a 'take the offer or else' ultimatum. My previous second-liner had been shunted into a none-job. He had been with IBM much longer than my 25 years. I got the impression in the meetings that 'prepared' us for civilian life that most people were glad to be leaving. I got upset because I had worked for a long time outside IBM UK, in a place where the principles still seemed to apply. How naive I was!