Chapter 2 of my book

2 Receiving Official Layoff Notice

Thursday, September 13, 2007 dawned for me after a very sleepless and tearful night.  

I knew I needed to steel myself to go to work and face the meeting with Human Resources and get the details of how my job would end.  These were the only things I knew for certain, because my coworker didn’t want to violate any rules by giving me too much information over the phone, and I didn’t want to place her in any jeopardy either.  

Judging by the meeting invitation that I had seen that had been recalled from my email, the persons in charge of the mass layoffs were taking great care to ensure that individuals who were out of the office during the official notice didn’t receive any advance information.

It was a very strange and surreal environment that I walked into that morning, although it might have seemed to an uninformed bystander that everything appeared the same.  It was the same elevator ride to the seventh floor, the same swiping the key card to enter the work area, the same basic layout and décor within the work area. 

Many of the same faces were sitting at temporary employee workstations that had been there when I left.  That day, however, it suddenly occurred to me that the ethnicity of the vast majority of those faces was closely linked to the new country where our jobs were going.  

The underlying atmosphere or “vibe” once I opened that door that morning was definitely changed and scary.  It could have been all in my mind or the product of lack of sleep the prior night, but I doubt it.

My supervisor met with me shortly after I arrived and said that she would be glad to go with me to the meeting with H.R.  She and I were always close; she was the best boss I had ever had in my long career, and she often indicated that I was one of her best subordinates ever, so it was a match made in heaven.  

I later learned that she had cried a great deal after learning that she was going to be losing the majority of her best and favorite employees and that she had no say whatsoever in who would stay and who would go.   At that time, there was no doubt that had she been allowed any input at all, she would have opted to retain me and at least one or two others.

I was probably still in shock over the whole situation, and during the actual meeting with H.R., I felt strangely disconnected, like a story you hear about a patient who has died and left his own body and is floating above watching the medical professionals administer life-saving procedures.  

The woman who was reading me the prepared statement was wearing an amount of perfectly applied makeup that made her look nearly clownish, in my opinion, and strangely like the singer Pat Benatar from the 1980s.  She paused at exactly the right places during the statement to look up and make eye contact with me, as well as to take breaths.  It was all like some sort of strange stage play that had been rehearsed but didn’t seem real.

The only words I remember exactly are these:  “Your position has been eliminated.”  

I later gave that a lot of thought.  With all the work I had been doing each day, the constant emails and phone calls, even at home after hours, trying to fix the faulty software system and help the business users to do their jobs in spite of it… my position was being eliminated?  What the hell!  

What happens to the software that isn’t working, the business users in the call center and sales offices who can’t get their jobs done because the computer system is malfunctioning, even the insured people who can’t get a correct rate to pay because their data is incorrect?  Does someone just wave a magic wand and that all goes away?  

How in the world would anyone be trained to do what I had been doing for all those years, and even begin to handle it as well as I had?

There were a few answers in the official statement that at least attempted to address such questions.  I was one of a select group that was being given an option to stay on and train the company, based in another country, that was taking over.  

I would receive several rather large bonuses depending upon how long I was willing to stay on, up until the date that would ultimately be my last day at work no matter what, which I was told would be February 1, 2008.  Apparently some consideration was being given to my exceptional work performance and my trustworthy character, and I did appreciate that.  

I later learned that many others in the department had received one of several less desirable situations:  some were told they needed to pack up their belongings and leave before the end of the week; others were told of an end date several months later with no bonuses offered.

The entire situation seemed totally surreal, and once it was to begin to seem “real” several weeks later, there were going to be an entirely new set of issues to deal with.  But for now, I suppose I felt somewhat fortunate and spared the worst of all possible fates.

Things at work continued for a while pretty much the same as they had been, other than the fact that as word spread among the business users, I was receiving many condolences, prayers and good wishes from those I had worked so hard to help for so many years.  They made it very clear to me that THEY appreciated me even if the company did not.

A short time after the official notices of job eliminations were completed, the foreign contracting firm who was taking over the support of the systems scheduled meetings with all the employees who were being let go.  They held out what appeared to be a lucrative offer to all of us:  Hire on with us, and you will receive your entire same salary and benefits, including vacation, for the duration of time that your system is still being supported in this country.  

Part of me was just plain ANGRY at the foreign company for taking my job; another part of me knew that those who remained behind would be subjected to stresses far worse than anything we had seen at our jobs to date, and I feared for my own sanity.  

I also felt, deep down, that I had always landed on my feet with job changes in the past, and that certainly I would again soon find other work.  For all these reasons, and with the agreement of my dear husband, I declined that offer right away.