BY BETTY BASTIDAS// Rex Stone was one of the first 100 people to be hired at Leap Frog, the high-tech educational toy company based in Emeryville, in June 2001. It was an exciting time. He watched as the company grew from 100 to 1000 people. The stock climbed, peaking at $45 dollars per share. But then the economy started to falter. Lay offs were announced.
And Stone survived. On November 20 of this year, the stock dropped to $3.29. He knew something had to give. His tenure was no longer his security blanket. Leap Frog was handing out pink slips to long-time employees like him.
“After seven and a half years of seeing lay off after lay off, I expected it. No one is really safe, even those tenured that have been working in the company for eight, nine, ten years,” said Stone.
With the unemployment rate in Alameda County at 7.1 percent, the highest it has been in 18 years, Stone is one of many Bay Area workers facing a gloomy job market. A survey from the Employment Development Department estimates the number of Californians holding jobs in October has dropped by 14,000 from September, down 162,000 from the employment total in October of last year.
Stone finds comfort in knowing he is not alone. “It’s not like I’m the only person in the country going through this,” he says.
Stone, a 32-year old techie hipster with reddish mutton chops and blocky glasses, has spent a quarter of his life at Leap Frog, doing hardware quality assurance for toys or getting paid to “break the toys” as he puts it. Now that door is closed. He says he knows his field will still be there, but doesn’t know how in demand it will be anymore.
“It will probably be moved to China where it is done a lot cheaper and more efficiently,” he says.
Mischa Dunton, a Leap Frog spokesperson said they are reducing operating expenses to adjust to the weakened outlook for consumer spending. “Reducing our workforce by approximately 70 employees is an action we would prefer not to have undertaken,” she said.
It has only been two weeks since Stone was laid off and he is already starting to make sacrifices. With his monthly income cut in half from $3,500 to $1,800 from unemployment wages, he is re-evaluating his needs. After 10 years of living in an apartment by Lake Merritt, he gave his landlord notice to move out. Stone plans to move in with his girlfriend — saving him $500 a month. He is also cutting down on the little splurges, like HBO and eating out three to four times a week.
Although it is tough to do with less, Stone said the hardest part about being laid off is not seeing the people he used to work with every day for the past seven years. “I need to absorb what I’ve gone through. It’s a relationship. There is a little cool-off period that I need to have.” He adds, “I have not updated my Facebook since.”
These days, having idle time has been the hardest adjustment for him. Stone keeps busy by renting movies through Netflix and working out at the gym. “I need to keep entertained,” he says. However, he does have some concerns with his current schedule. When he talks to his girlfriend about what he did that day, Stone says, “It starts and ends with I went to the gym and then I played Rock Band for a while. It doesn’t make for a very exciting conversation day in and day out.”
With 15 weeks of severance pay plus unemployment wages, Stone is not motivated to look for a job right now. “It’s too hard, and too many people are in the same position I’m in.” His plan right now is to wait until after the holidays. “Maybe I’ll find my actual passion that is going to really drive me,” he says — at least until his money runs out in January or February.
For Stone, getting laid off is not the worst thing that can happen in his life. He knows people are in more dire situations than him. “I don’t have kids, or a wife, or a mortgage to pay,” he says. “I can afford to change a couple of things in my life.”
