Group Story

By: Hiep, Yilin, Gabi, Sunghee

Edited by: Hiep

Steve was 45 years old, but he looked younger. He was an IT manager at ABC Company in Los Angeles. There were 5 peoples in IT department, and all of them were young except Steve. He had been working here for 15 years totally, it’s really a long time. When he came to ABC Company, it was just a small company, and he was only one to take care about system and network for this company.  But now, ABC had become bigger and Steve became IT manager naturally. Steve used to a good staff, and he hadn’t made any mistake seriously. The telephone rang out loud make him wake up when he was thinking about the past.  He heard a sweet voice from the secretary:

 “Hi Mr.Steve, our boss – Mr.Lee asked you to meet him at his room at 4”.  

 “OK, thanks Lisa” he said and wondered why the boss called him.  Steve just met Mr.Lee in some meeting, but had never met individual. He looked at his watch, it was 3:30. He came to Data center room to confirm everything is ok. He thought maybe Mr.Lee wanted to promote him because he was a good staff in many years, or maybe Mr.Lee wanted to talk to him about expand the current network or upgrade for new system. He looked at his watch again, it was 3:50, and then he went to elevator, puting the button number one to go down.  Mr.Steve’s room was a big room at the first floor; he chose this room because he didn’t want to use elevator every day. When Steve was in front of Mr.Steve’s , Lisa asked him

“Hi Mr.Steve, please come in, Mr. Steve is waiting for you”.

He came in the room and seeing mr.Steve was reading some documents.  After said “hello” and handshake, Mr.Lee asked Steve to sit down. After that, Mr.Lee’s face had changed, he became serious and look like worry about something.  Mr.Lee began:

“You are a good staff in many years, you’ve helped us to build a good system for this company, I want to thank you about that”.

 “Thank you, sir” Steve said and he couldn’t know what Mr.Lee said after that.

 “But our company hasn’t worked very well recently; I think you know about the recession world. And I must to lay off some employee to save our company. Our data center is very good right now, and I think we don’t need to upgrade it in next 4, 5 years. You have worked for a long time, you should relax, Mr.Steve. I thought we just need two employees in IT department to take care our system. John and Jackie are young, so they can learn well about technology, I am very sorry about that Mr. Steve, I don’t want to talk about that anymore, sorry”.  Said Mr.Lee

 Mr. Steve kept silent after that, because he couldn’t believe that he was laid off some day. Everything in his head was a chaos, he wanted to say something but he didn’t know what to do. “Are you ok?, Mr.Steve”, Mr.Lee called him and asked him to hand over his work to John and Jackie. Steve left Mr.Lee’s room and forgot to say bye to Lisa. That day was a bad memory in Mr.Steve’s life.