When I spend half my day in the office asking for something to do it’s a bit concerning. I know everyone I’ve spoken to is running a little slow lately and no one’s really spending any money on much, especially companies and their marketing budgets. That’s where my life-blood primarily comes from. I’ve been in this seat twice before and I’m going to be honest with you, it was tough every time and the outcome was never that great.

The first time I was working at a company called the Mercurio Group. The lack of business was primarily the work of an incompetent and irresponsible owner. No incoming projects meant we sat around for a month or two with nothing to do but work on our portfolios and resumes. Not good but we all kind of saw it coming. I had a new job by the end of the week that time.

The second time though was in 2002 right after the twin towers fell and things in the design industry got really tough. The economy was in the shitter and my employer Greg Lange of then Lange Wheeler Design Group just simply didn’t have a use for their sole web designer and certainly didn’t have the clients to justify my salary. So, unfortunately I was laid off and spent 6 months doing freelance and bartending to make it. I was 24 or 25 back then. Greg was pretty much in tears that day as I wasn’t the only one he had to let go. Yeah, it was that bad.

Now I’m kind of looking around over the last couple months and I’m seeing the trend once again. I work in a small design agency of about 8 people. Two project managers, a writer, the owner Bill, our developer Rich, Rick the SEO guy, Neil our designer and me (I do pretty much everything from Design, planning to CSS/PHP Development). When times like these hit you tend to take a better stock of who sits around you, trust me. It’s not that I think any of us are getting laid off, it’s more that at some point it’s going to get tough to pay our salaries, especially without new projects coming onboard and who knows what’ll happen then. I don’t want to see it happen again but I’m beginning to get concerned.

I just really hope things turn around soon. I like being busy.