When work leaves you speechless

I went to work last Tuesday and was looking forward to a productive day. I was light on meetings and was excited about getting some things checked off my list. Of course, that’s when the real fun began. For the second time in four years, I got told that I had been laid off. My first thought, “Oh great, here we go again.”  

The first time I was laid off my coworkers and I saw the writing on the wall. We were in the middle of the pandemic, and the firm was losing money faster than employees calling out sick with the Coronavirus. The timing surprised me a bit more this time. Oh, I’ve been paying attention to the news and have noticed Amazon, Google, Twitter, and many others announcing layoffs. However, when a senior manager sent me an invite for a last-minute meeting, my mind started spinning. With so many IT projects and large-scale changes in the works, I thought for sure we’d have a few more months. 

Image by Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels.

Good news, bad news

The irony of my layoff was that I got the news on my one-year anniversary at the firm. In a span of a few hours, I went from getting a system-generated email from the CEO of the company saying, “Oh, we’re so happy to have you, we think you’re swell” to being pulled into an impromptu meeting with a manager and HR rep and being told, “Be sure to drop off your badge, and don’t let the door kick you on the way out!”

It wasn’t quite like that, but you get my drift. 

In the following days, I’ve gone through a myriad of emotions, sadness, anger, denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance and then back to the beginning. Many of my peers — 300 or so employees — have talked about grieving the loss of their jobs and I think there’s some truth to the comment. It feels very similar to grieving the loss of a loved one.

Image by Anna Shvets via Pexels.

Seeing the positives

The day we got the news, my immediate coworkers joked about taking the rest of the day off and going out for Bloody Mary’s, Margaritas, and beers. My splurge? I’ve been a big Diet Pepsi drinker for much of my life. I gave it up recently to take better care of my health and have done a good job of staying away from it, at least until I got the news. When I went for a short drive to collect my thoughts, I splurged and gulped down a Diet Pepsi and a super-sized pack of Peanut M&Ms. Oh the little things. 

I’m still a bit numb about that news, but I’m laughing. I think that’s a good thing. Oh, I know there are some frustrating days in front of me, but I’m grateful that I got to work with great people, learned a ton from my job, and I’m glad too that I have the support of my wife and family. 

I’ve learned over the years from other huge changes, you may have lots of decisions and challenges in front of you, but what matters most, is simply getting yourself in the right mindset and taking the next step. The step or action is irrelevant, what matters is to keep moving forward. Yes, I’ll get to where I need, I just need to take one step at a time.

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