I worked for a company heavily into government contracts and got into a tight squeeze. They had two rounds of layoffs in two years. Both on a Friday. The first

I worked for a company heavily into government contracts and got into a tight squeeze. They had two rounds of layoffs in two years. Both on a Friday. The first one was crazy, no one knew anything, and suddenly you saw people crying in the hallways. By mid-day, the news spread that the company is doing layoffs. The team I was in went to lunch, and we all toasted a glass of whiskey, expecting to lose some folks. Luckily we didn't. The following year, the same thing happened; suddenly, people getting laid off. We called it Black Friday. We went for whiskey again. No one got laid off. We were lucky to be working on a strategic project. Still, the affected people in the hallways were definitely something I'll remember. The company is doing very bad now. What was once our manager is now scraping by, doing database administration and fixing some bugs, as he's the only one left from our former team, and there's a government obligation to keep the system running. He stayed because he has stocks in the company that have plummeted, but he's still hopeful. He sometimes asks for our help, even after a decade, and sometimes we hop on and help him with something for the sake of old times.