Ed's Revelation

We walked back to Ed's office and he sat us down. He seemed a little concerned and didn't start talking right away. Bill broke the silence and asked Ed what was bothering him.

Ed began,
"I brought you guys in here to let you know what the word is. I mean, we have to stick together, right?

You've heard, as we all have, the talk about the economy, and how it's; well, how it's in a bit of a tailspin right now. I've got to tell you, even though we are part of one of the nations top financial firms our company is not immune to the vacillations of the economy. Financial firms that have been involved in certain transactions such as credit default swaps and risky lending practices are in particular peril. You may not know this but our firm is one of the institutions at risk. I just got back from a meeting with the other directors and the accounting executive vice president suggested that we are scraping by for now, but if things get any worse there may be some layoffs. I'm pretty confident that we in IT are relatively safe. I mean, how could they pink slip us? Who would reformat their hard drives after they open a suspicious attachment or clean their laptops of all the spyware that they pick up surfing nefarious websites."

After listening to Ed, I was certain that things had to be pretty bad. The other directors never invited Ed to anything. It's not because Ed is not intelligent, or is incompetent. They don't invite him to many meetings because he's IT (irrelevant) and, well, he's kind of a nerd; a nerd like us.