The RIF Policy

 R.A.P.E.D.      S.C.R.E.W.E.D.      S.H.A.F.T.E.D.

 

     Nobody was saying the three words out loud.  But that is what they read as the paper made its way around the table.

 

     It was in the seventies.  Inflation deluged the country.  (Remember President Gerald Ford’s WIN button—Whip Inflation Now?)

     In 1969 when I began my teaching career, teachers were in demand.  A few years later, changes in population had reversed things.  It was difficult to find a teaching job.

     Because of population losses in rural areas, rural schools began to lose students and needed to reduce the size of their faculties.  That was a difficult problem because faculty members were farmers’ wives and local boys who wanted to live in the community where they grew up.  Thus, the RIF policy, Reduction In Force, was a hot topic of the day.

     Randy (the names have been changed to protect the guilty) was a hometown boy.  He was gung-ho teachers’ organization (it wasn’t referred to as a union yet).

      He was good at filling our mailboxes with flyers, often humorous ones.  One example was a cartoon showing a dying teacher, a nonunion member,  with his wife at his bedside.  “Why do you want the NEA members to be your pall bearers?” she asked.  “They have carried me this far.  They just as well carry me the rest of the way,” the dying man utters.

      Randy was the apple of his mother’s eye.  She put on two or three suppers for Randy’s male teacher friends, a group in which I was fortunate enough to be included.  The main fare was rocky mountain oysters along with pork and beans, coleslaw, carrot sticks as well as a dessert of some kind.  Delicious!

     One time we were talking airplanes, it was my flying days, and Randy’s Mom allowed that we should be talking about education instead of flying.  Afterall, we were all teachers.  Randy assured her it was all right to talk about other things, flying in this case.  Then it was all right with her too.  If Randy said it, it was so. 

       Randy did eventually leave his hometown community.  He got his master’s degree in administration and spent a few years as a principal in a mountain town in Colorado.  Apparently, that was not to his liking, because he returned to his hometown and worked as a seed salesman.

      I seem to remember that he applied for principal jobs with the local district, but I don’t think he ever got one.  He may have rejoined the faculty, because I do remember that he was very, very anti-union.  He wanted nothing to do with the NEA.

    The paper that was making its way around the table was also a Randy handout.  Mervin Bird, the grade school principal, had brought it to the school board meeting.  I was the teacher rep who “got” to attend board meetings.  I don’t remember whether my dislike of any kind of meetings was before that or because of that role. 

     I didn’t get to see the copy that board members were looking at.  It was only for those seated at the table.  It took a while, but I figured out what the paper contained.

     Here is a version of the joke, although not the original:

 

RIF Policy  (Reduction In Force)

 

     As a result of the reduction of money budgeted for the Department areas, we are forced to cut our number of personnel.

     Under the new plan, older employees will be asked to accept early retirement, thus permitting the retention of younger people who represent our future plans.

     Therefore, a program to phase out older personnel by the end of the current fiscal year, via retirement, will be placed in effect immediately. The program will be known as R.A.P.E. (Retire Aged Personnel Early).

     Employees who are R.A.P.E.D. will be given the opportunity to look for other employment outside the company. Provided they are being R.A.P.E.D., they can request a review of the employment records before actual retirement takes place. This phase of the operation will be called S.C.R.E.W. (Survey of Capabilities of retired Early Workers).

     All employees who have been R.A.P.E.D. or S.C.R.E.W.E.D. may file an appeal with upper management. This will be called S.H.A.F.T. (Study by Higher Authority Following Termination). Under the terms of the new policies, employees may be R.A.P.E.D. once, S.C.R.E.W.E.D. twice, but may be S.H.A.F.T.E.D. as many times as the company deems appropriate.

 

      Tension in the room was high.  Would hometown boy Randy get into trouble for putting that flyer into every teacher’s mailbox? 

     The last school board member to look at the paper lowered it and looked around.  He had been a teacher, a coach, a principal, and had retired to make a decent living as, you guessed it, an insurance salesman.  He was a pillar of the community who had served in many ways, as a city councilman, and now as a school board member.

       With a smile he asked, “Well, is this our policy?”

      Everybody laughed.  The tension was broken.

      Well, everybody laughed except Mr. Bird.  Mr. Bird’s near-permanent scowl grew more severe.  He was a pipe smoker.  I think he must have held his pipe in the left side of his mouth because when he was really upset, the left side of his mouth retracted as if to join his left ear.  It moved back and forth, almost a half-smile that couldn’t last.

      Mr. Bird had “retired from farming to teach” one of his teachers said of him.  He was a nice man who really was not a good administrator.  Did he suspect he was about to be RIFFED?  Why did he bring that paper to the board meeting?  Wouldn’t it have been better to bury the thing rather than attract attention to one of his recalcitrant teachers that he had failed to control?  Did he expect the board to discipline Randy, since he didn’t have the guts to do it himself?  Would the board censure Randy for using school paper and copy machine to distribute such stuff?

     At this point, the superintendent, who pretty much controlled the meetings, suggested they move on to another agenda item.  And so they did.

      It was my job to report at the Wednesday morning faculty meeting which followed the monthly Tuesday night board meeting.  I always trod carefully on shaky ground, as my principal and boss was always in attendance, at board meetings, too.  I don’t remember if I reported on that incident or not, but of course the word got out.

       If Randy ever suffered anything for his transgression, I never heard.  Both he and Mr. Bird would eventually leave the district, Mr. Bird to retire, and Randy to become an administrator himself.  Neither was subjected to the RIF policy.

     Here endeth another tail from, “It happened in the Teachers’ Lounge.”