Not the kind of bump off Clemenza above from the Godfather (“Leave the gun, Take the Cannoli”) would refer to as going to the mattresses.    …. more like…. I’ll take your job and you take somebody else’s…..

For those of us who were impacted by “bumping” we know it was a process used to reduce our employee workforce during Polaroid’s recessionary period. This process granted senior employee the rights to replace a less senior employee in a particular assignment or job for which both employees are qualified.

As a low seniority employee, I was bumped from many jobs over several years.  In the beginning, I must admit it was painful.  I resisted it, got mad, frustrated and felt worthless. I held roles sometimes for as little a six weeks and then would be bumped off to another new role in a different job family, town and shift. After a while it dawned on me that being bumped off was a great opportunity in disguise. It also suited my restless personality for “learn and move on to something new”….

My journey through Polaroid became a wonderful adventure as got to know new coworkers, gain new skills and familiarized myself with the many different aspects of Polaroid’s businesses. I bounced all over the company to various divisions, locations and workgroups in Cambridge, Norwood, Waltham, Paramus etc..

But the most important thing the bumping process taught me was to love and embraced change… not the kind you initiate yourself but the constant kind that happens to you. Changes that involve moving to different places, meeting new people, difficult challenges keep you flexible and open-minded. Professionally the agility that I learned at Polaroid laid the groundwork managing and driving teams at Sun Microsystem, Oracle and Dell.   In the IT world survival is a constant process of retooling skill sets and adapting to new technologies. Those of us who survived the many years of bumping at Polaroid gained valuable work and life skills for life far beyond Polaroid.