THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 11, 1996 TAG: 9602100348
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
In 18 years at Virginia Power, Bob Jennings advanced through eight jobs and worked for about as many bosses.
So it was ironic that last August, when the state's largest electric utility decided it no longer needed Jennings, the boss who delivered the news was the same man who'd hired him nearly two decades before.
``It was a shock to me,'' says Jennings, a 42-year-old Virginia Beach man. ``To this day, I've never been able to figure out how they arrived at this decision . . . I've talked to other people in the company and what they tell me is, `Look, you just were at the wrong place at the wrong time.' ''
So goes one of about 1,000 stories of lost jobs at Virginia Power since the company began its massive downsizing a year ago.
Jennings, who'd started as a customer-service representative in Leesburg and left the company as customer-service director in the Chesapeake, says he'd never gotten a bad job evaluation. He'd expected to retire from the utility.
``I can't say that there was a single job with Virginia Power that I didn't enjoy,'' he says.
But with cost-cutting at the utility growing in the past few years, he says, it was getting harder to keep positive about the company's direction.
Competition, or the threat of it, did strange things to the company he loved. Top executives started thinking increasingly of employees as costs to be eliminated.
``They got very money-oriented and bottom-line oriented and lost sight of the human dimension of the business,'' he says. ``I think they got scared to death of competition . . . They panicked and they went out like a freight train to get ahead of the process.''
Jennings participated in the decision that probably helped usher in his ultimate dismissal: to move bill-payment centers from the utility's business offices into groceries and drug stores and transfer all remaining customer-service functions from those offices to telephone centers.
It made sense, he says. A tiny percentage of customers used the business offices.
But with fewer responsibilities left in offices and with a drive to consolidate management, fewer managers were needed. So, Jennings was let go.
He has no complaints about Virginia Power's severance. As a longtime salaried employee, he was provided 18 months' pay. ``That's going way above the call of duty,'' he says.
The severance has helped him prepare for an orderly launch of his own business, inspecting homes and business properties.
But Jennings says, ``I'd trade that severance package today to have my position back.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
Ron Pomeroy
Lineman
Thomas A. Hyman Jr.
Eastern division VP
Randy Buffington
Lineman
by CNB