According to just about everyone who works at Chesapeake Energy – or knows someone who knows someone who works for the natural gas giant – a substantial round of layoffs are expected today at the company's Oklahoma City campus. Chesapeake apparently conducts layoffs on the Tuesdays of pay weeks, and with this being one of those pay weeks, just about every frackin' employee is holding his or her breath.
At least that's the rumor everyone is hearing. Here are some rumors I've heard from various Moles:
• "The Chesapeake HR Department was bottled up at the Renaissance Hotel all weekend preparing packages for today"
• "If it's a big group tomorrow my guess is it's all from land. They are supposed to lay off 400 land employees by the end of the month"
• "My wife had to choose her people to cut last week, while not knowing if she was being chosen by her superiors to be cut herself"
• "Tighter security and no one allowed on campus unless they are a current employee."
To beat the head off a dead horse and then place it in a bed of a Hollywood movie mogul, these are just rumors. We don't know if they're true or not, but where there's smoke in the Ogle Mole Network, there's usually a natural gas flare burning bright.
(Update: Can you believe it? The rumors ended up being true... again. Chesapeake announced today that they have laid off 640 employees in Oklahoma City.)