Goodby's Dignified Good-byes

Even under the duress of the current economic climate, Goodby Silverstein & Partners remains a class act in both the quality of their work and the management of their agency.

In an e-mail obtained by fuckedcompany (which mistakenly identifies them as a "lawfirm"), they compassionately explain staff and pay cuts.

Getting high praise for their humanity from fuckedcompany (a running commentary on managerial ineptness and brutality) is, in a sense, yet another well-deserved accolade for this outstanding agency.

Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 14:44:33 -0800 Organization: Goodby Silverstein & Partners
To: All Agency
Subject: Today's Sad News

Hello there everyone,

For those of you who missed today's Agency meeting, we wanted to let you know that we had very sad news to announce.

Over the last month or so, we have lost the ****** account, and two other major clients have made big cuts in our fees. The cumulative negative effect on our revenues has been very substantial. Sadly, therefore, we have no choice but to reduce our expenses again in order to restore a safe level of profitability. As we said when we all talked about this earlier in the year, a minimum threshold level of profitability is essential to the Agency's economic health, and the security of all those who work here. That profit threshold gives us the cushion to enable us to ride out the kind of negative events we have been suffering all year long. Because the economy is in poor shape now, and clients are suffering mightily, we need more than ever to be in decent financial shape. In a nutshell, we need to restore our margin of safety. Hence today's sad news, which is as follows:

We have had to lay off a number of people who work here. They are our friends and coworkers, and no words can really make sense of what is happening for them. However, unfortunately, we no longer have the work for them, nor will we have the money coming in to pay them

We are asking the top 40% plus of wage earners in the company to share in the burden by taking a cut in their salary. These salary cuts will be graduated with lower salaried people taking smaller cuts, and the higher salaries being cut more.

We are extending indefinitely any consideration of raises for everyone.

We are asking everyone to run a fine tooth comb through all our out of pocket expenses and cut those to the bone.

We are very sorry to be losing the people who will be leaving the company, and it is very important to be clear that none of this is their fault. We thank them for all the good work they have done here, and the contribution they have made to making the place what it is.

We have invited everyone who is leaving to stay as long as they find it helpful, and to use the place as a base of operations for themselves. We are also doing everything we can to help with job leads and any other support we can give. We would like to ask all of you to help out in any way you can too - with leads or ideas about jobs, possible freelance opportunities at other places, or just being around to talk things over and provide support.

No doubt a lot of people have specific questions about what is going on, not all of which can or should be answered in an email like this. Please feel free to stop in and see whichever of the Partners, Associate Partners or Department Heads you work with most closely, and they will fill you in on anything else you need or want to know. We also ask you to treat everything we have told you with discretion and refer any press inquiries to Jeff Goodby.
Thank you.

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