A time to laugh: Save & Prosper April-October 1998

After I had been made redundant, UBS HR provided outplacement services both to me and, as a concession because they knew of his continuing unemployment, my husband. Predictably, I found a job long before he did - in fact he did not find a job through UBS's outplacement service at all, though he found them helpful. In contrast, I was back at work only a month after my redundancy. I went to work for Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC).

CSC had recently taken over the IT function at Save & Prosper in Romford. They were running a large Year 2000 project, organised into three "high performing teams" (HPTs). I was to run the Corporate HPT.

High performing, my team was not. And some members were directly obstructive. Rather as I had been resented by SMI, so I was resented by ex-S&P staff. I was CSC, and they hated CSC.

Nonetheless, the S&P project was fun. Not because what we were doing was fun - it was at times mind-numbingly boring - but because people made it fun. From senior management down to junior team members, there was a sprinkling of people who liked to laugh and who made us laugh. I think I laughed more in six months at S&P than during two whole years at SBC Warburg. Although it had black moments, I remember my time at S&P as a bright spot.

But it ended badly, and to this day I don't know why. In September 1998 the "investigation and correction" part of the project had been competed, and we were about to embark on user testing. Despite a poor appraisal (which I felt was a bit unfair but accepted), I was offered the job of user testing project manager. But I thought about what that would entail - long hours, weekend working, never seeing my two small children. I had been horribly burned by my experience of user testing at SBC Warburg, and I suppose I feared a repetition. I couldn't do that either to myself or to my children. So I turned it down.

This left my manager with something of a problem. I was the most senior project manager there - and the most expensive. But I had turned down the most senior project management role. The alternative was a much smaller project - and it quickly became apparent that that project was not going to fly. I was in serious danger of becoming a "redundant but employed" project manager yet again.

I don't know what discussions there were behind the scenes. But eventually I was asked to resign. What puzzled me then - and still puzzles me - is that as I worked for CSC, not S&P, I could simply have been redeployed: yes, it would probably have meant moving house, but that was not the end of the world.

I have heard that there were complaints about me, but from whom, and what the substance of those complaints was, I don't know.

What sticks in my mind though was being described as "General COBOL" by a junior team member who had a degree in psychology. She said General COBOL led from the front, and defended his team to the last: when things went wrong, he would be the first to fall on his sword.

I suppose, in agreeing to resign, I fell on my sword.

Being asked to resign hurt. A lot. The old wounds reopened: I felt worthless, a failure - yet again. I hated myself.  But even more, this time, I felt the loss of the people. There had been such camaraderie. I really missed them.

I retreated back home to lick my wounds. It was several months before I felt able to look for another job.