Where The End Begins

I'd been working where I worked for a while. Seven years to be exact. In fact, the day I was fired was one week exactly after my seventh year working for my workplace.

It came as a shock and it didn't. I hadn't always gotten along with my supervisor, who was just another supervisor in a litany of supervisors stacked to the ceiling, who were underneath another pile of Vice-Presidents leading up to some guy who owned the place, but enough about that.

Things are tough all over. I realize this. More now than then, but I do and did get it. Things were tight, budgets were being slashed, and the company even sold one of their private planes and let the pilot (who'd been there even longer than I have) go.

The week before it happened, a buddy of mine who was also let go and myself were perceptive enough to notice a lot of closed-door meetings. A lot of hushed talk. People were acting strangely all around. We got a cryptic e-mail telling all of us to "be in the office" one Thursday afternoon for a meeting. Then our supervisor told us "the visitors weren't going to be coming" and the meeting was canceled.

We had speculated and gossiped all day about "why would our boss tell us to be at work during work hours?" And, "why can't he just talk to us now...he's in the next room..."

The weekend happened, and we were off for Memorial Day, and bright and early the Tuesday following it I went into work.

An hour and a half later, I was taking cardboard boxes full of seven years of work detritus back to my car wiping away tears of shock. I was floored. I didn't see it coming. Never expected it to happen. This guy in my department who was also a manager told me he'd tell me all about it. It's over two months later and I haven't heard a peep. Probably doesn't hurt that I banned and blocked everyone I'd directly worked with on any and all social networking I have in my path.

Moments after I had staggered to my desk after being told that I was part of some budget cuts and that it wasn't performance based, but "budgetary" my friend got called in and was told the same thing. He had a different reaction as he'd longed to have the freedom to travel and do things outside of what we'd done at our job. All I remember was my head boss, a V.P., being in the room and saying "This sucks."

The visitors, my head boss and the HR lady, had arrived on this day. Odd to realize we would've been let go five days earlier. At least I had a okay Memorial Day, due to one of the other folks being let go being on vacation the day they were originally going to do it. Hence, the "visitors not coming over" on that day.

He invited me to have a beer, but all I really wanted to do was be by myself. It felt at the time like I'd wasted nearly a decade of trying really hard, and doing good work, and being loyal in the face of good job offers when I could have taken them for nothing. Here I was, with my box of inside jokes from a job I didn't have anymore. My friend and I made plans to go to the Unemployment office the following day.

The strangest part was going to our main office to drop off my keys so that the gears would start turning for my getting any sort of seperation pay. They'd had a meeting that morning to tell everyone that still had a job that several of us had lost ours. When I entered the building to drop off my keys, no one, and I mean no one was at their desks. So my last visit to the place I'd worked the last seven years was a solitary silent affair.

Surreal, to say the least.

I saw the lady who handled our travel in the parking lot. She seemed shocked to see me and told me that she was "really sorry to hear what happened" and I just said "Okay."

The ride home was strange. Telling my wife was even stranger.

My next post will be the very weird tale of my friend and I going to the Unemployment office. It's a doozy.