Surprise me not

I haven't quite gotten over the fact that my team mate in the office, Nina, will soon be out. She finally resigned last month (after more than a year of "thinking"), on the day of her 4th anniversary in the company, and her last day will be on August 22. I thought she will be the only employee casualty in our department, but just about a week after, another officemate from a different team also resigned. Her name's Louise and she's getting married on Saturday. She hasn't been coming to office after tendering her resignation, as she has already filed a leave of absence for her wedding preparations.

Since a major reorganization in our department last year, the situation in the office has been a little bit unstable. Several resignations, redundancies, location transfers and changes of responsibility followed that major reorg. This week, another reorganization has been announced. Surprisingly, I am part of it, and surprisingly, I am part of it because Nina is leaving. The new team they formed to do a new set of tasks should have included Nina, but since she'll be out, I was considered to take her place.

Unfortunately, another officemate, Ria, who's supposed to be part of our new team when it starts to function in October, resigned this morning -- the 3rd casualty in a span of a month. Now, I'm no longer sure if they are the casualties, or we are, as we are now lacking manpower by 3. Am I surprised that these three people are leaving? No, I guess not.

Since the first major reorg, nothing surprises me anymore in this office. Even a problem I encountered this afternoon regarding our magazine pagination has rattled me for a few minutes -- but only for a few minutes. And after that, I proceeded to looking for a solution, straightfaced. Thanks to a friend in Shenzhen, Talline, the problem was easily solved with plenty of time to spare before the end of day deadline. Test of faith and test of skills. That's what this is all about.