Today the company I've been temping at was just closed by the home office. I've been downsized, and I don't technically even work there. I think that's a new low.

The closure will actually roll-out over the next few months, although all of the employees left early today. I say "employees" because we temps stayed on.

See, we don't get paid if we don't work - it's the temp credo. So over the past few weeks I've braved blizardly driving conditions to get in on-time or stay late to ensure payment. Heck, once I even worked during a power outage. That was something.

In fact, yesterday's blizzard day was the first time where all three temps in my department (the only temps in the building, actually) left work early. So of course we were all planning on working late tonight, to make up for the lost time.

But then today our manager "team leader" never came back after the "you're all fired" meeting (wisely it was held off-site). So we three non-employees continued to work quietly at our desk all afternoon as the sobbing, angry and shell-shocked real employees slowly dissipated from the surrounding cubicles. By four in the afternoon you could have heard a pin drop from across the building, provided, of course, someone were actually there to drop said pin.

Then just before five a smartly dressed gentleman none of us had ever seen before wandered by our cubicles. Odd. After he passed we heard the muffled tones of him getting on his cell phone.

Something was up.

But, as we're not paid to think, just work, we continued on. Like the proverbial chicken whose leg muscles still flex after the ax has cleared its head from its shoulders, we worked on, sans managers, other employees, or even mailroom guy. All muscle, no brain - the other temp credo.

A few minutes later one of the company's human resources ladies whom we did recognize wandered by. She asked politely, well as politely as one who works in HR really can be (they're generally a blunt and brusque lot) for us to get out of the building immediately, and to not come back until 8 am tomorrow, no earlier.

One of the other temps was confused and a little amazed at this. She obviously has never been downsized before.

I actually have only been made redundant once in my career, way back in December of 2000 at LEGO Media Santa Monica (yes, the LEGO company was trying to break in the entertainment biz. As you probably didn't know that, you can see how far they actually got).

In that case our hint that something was amiss was that the president of the division was actually flying to Los Angeles from Denmark, or England, or wherever he was based. It was the first time in the six months of the Santa Monica office that he was coming around, and we all doubted that it was a purely social call.

Again, they had an off-site meeting, and again I wasn't privileged enough to attend. To be fair, I was the assistant, and the other four people in the offices all held some kind of "director", "executive" or "senior vice president" in their titles.

When the four returned from their meeting it was less sobbing than downright angry. Pure rage, actually. The VP, Kathrin, grizzled by many years of fighting with corporate parent Viacom while at Nickelodeon and Nick Films, just handed me her cell phone (this was pre-Blackberry), office key and parking card, and walked out, seething.

In that case I was asked, or commanded, really, to take down the office and mail everything to LEGOLAND in San Diego, who'd get everything back to Slough, England where the corporate overlords of LEGO Media resided.

Thoughts of Grosse Pointe Blank and Joan Cusack "taking down the office" with a five-gallon jug of gasoline flitted through my head.

Naw, they probably frown upon arson in Southern California. Too many dry hills and expensive homes. People are so snippy about that stuff.

And that right there is why they kicked us out tonight in South Portland. Oh, yeah, that's where this now-doomed office is, in South Portland, right behind the mall, actually.

Oddly enough the home office is in Portland, Oregon. I'm trying to think of a Lost "Not in Portland" joke but I really can't at this point. Still, at points the "Portland" / "South Portland" thing confuses everyone from customer to employees all the way down to temps. Why they couldn't have picked Scarborough or Westbrook or Falmouth is beyond me.

Anyway, honestly I'm really quite ambivalent about this recent turn of events. The pay was good for temp work, but of course the job itself was mindless, as it was temp work.

I guess it all just makes sense, in this economy, that companies need to consolidate for a sustainable future. That they need to find opportunities to centralize key functions, streamline the processes and improve efficiencies. Operate the business at peak efficiency, if you will. Reduce costs and increase revenues. Think of the 5-Year Plan.

(Bet you didn't know that there is a MBA class called "Corporate Reasoning for Downsizing". It's required. Can you tell that I got an A?)

No, I hate to make light of this turn of events, and the 200-some odd people in South Portland whose lives just got plum crazy today. That's the real tragedy.