It Will Never Be Normal Again
“The financial damage was minimal. The psychological and emotional damage was catastrophic.”
That became my go-to line to answer questions about how I was — and am — doing.
Perhaps I should take a second to explain what the hell I’m talking about. That would probably be helpful now, wouldn’t it? If you’re reading this on its publication date, June 10th, 2023, it marks the one year anniversary of me being unexpectedly laid off from my favorite job I’ve ever had.
“The financial damage was minimal. The psychological and emotional damage was catastrophic.”
Everyone has a different upbringing, but more often than not, growing up we’re messaged the idea of ‘Work hard and you’ll do well in your career and get promoted. Slack off and you’ll get in trouble and maybe fired.”
Pretty black and white when you put it like that.
What that well-intentioned cliche doesn’t account for is real-life things — Economic recessions, wars, venture capitalist funding, runway, etc.
There’s a whole lot more gray we learn about when the cloak of innocence is pulled back as adults.
This is not a warm and fuzzy story. It won’t make you feel good, but if you’ve unfortunately been through a layoff, my hope is you’ll find some solace in it, and if you haven’t, maybe you’ll get a glimpse of what those who have go through.
‘Is this some punishment for backing out of another job before I accepted this job?’
That was the first thought that ran through my head when the Zoom call abruptly ended.
‘I don’t know. If God is penalizing me for that, it feels kinda strict.
But what are people around me gonna think?’
Let’s add some more context. Both of my parents have been in their jobs for more than two decades. I had married into an upper-middle class Long Island family. None of them had ever been through this.
I suppose I should pause for a paragraph to put my hand up and acknowledge some privilege. When push comes to shove, I was never in danger of being evicted from my apartment nor not being able to eat. If I needed help, there would have been people able to help me.
Still though, I’m a prideful person, and in the three months that it took me to find another job, outside of filing for unemployment benefits, I didn’t ask for nor accept money from anyone.
Freelance work. Massively cutting down on spending. You figure it the fuck out to keep the financial damage minimal. Unfortunately other people aren’t always as fortunate. It fucks up folks’ livelihood, and more important than money, it cuts at your soul, eats away at your mental health.
That’s what I really want to focus on.
Let me also take the time to say that the job I have now is a really good one with good people, and I like it a lot. In the literal sense of having and not having a job, I made it to the other side in relative short order, and I am fortunate for that.
But I’d appreciate if you would simultaneously allow me a few moments to detail what made the layoff so heartbreaking.
You see, in my very early 20s, I developed a fascination with the city of San Francisco and the vibrant tech scene there. I had a dream of booking a one way ticket. I would rent out someone’s garage and work in a pizza joint to make ends meet (maybe burritos would have been even better upon thinking about it now) before finding a full-time job.
That plan never got off the ground. I was too much of a pussy bitch to pull the trigger and make it happen. There’s nothing worse in life that you can be than a pussy bitch.
So I ‘settled’ for New York instead, and I make it a point to write settled in air quotes because it was the best decision I ever made. I fell in love and met my wife, several good friends, and became closer to the person I wanted to be, but work wise, I found myself straying from who I wanted to be as time went on.
A lot of folks use their 20s to switch jobs every year or so as they try to discover what they actually want to do. Not all the time, but those changes often come with big pay bumps as well. Then by the time you’re in your late 20s, you kinda settle into something and go for a while.
Well, I kinda took the opposite path there, having the same job from age 23 through the early part of age 29. You get promoted a couple times. You get comfortable. You go into autopilot. Maybe you realize a few years in that it’s no longer right for you, but you put it off.
‘I got too much going on right now.’
‘I’ll look after football season.’
Football season suddenly turns into multiple football seasons. You wake up one day and feel like an absolute shell of the person you want to be. You no longer enjoy the work, and the culture has turned toxic.
Time to get serious and do something about it.
So I went from having the same job for five and a half years to having three jobs in 20 months. Some might call this going full on corporate villain, but I worked really hard at the first two and each time, I inched closer to what I was looking for. Then November 2021 felt like a coronation.
I knew the ship had sailed on my SF dream, but what if I could bring part of San Francisco into my New York City living room? 🤔
That was my thinking when in September 2021 I saw a job pop up on LinkedIn for a remote Social Media role with a Silicon Valley startup that I had previously heard of. As soon as I started the interview rounds, I was instantly galvanized. The process took about a month and in that time, I had tentatively accepted another job, but I was so enthralled by this that when I received an offer from said Silicon Valley startup, I backed out of the other job opportunity prior to starting.
I had even left a chunk of money on the table when backing out, but for the first time in my career, I felt like I was being paid what I was worth. Six figure salary, remote work, an incredible team, the best manager I ever had after a string of mostly toxic ones from 2016–2020. And last but not least, I had the opportunity to manage a coordinator who was fresh out of college.
I had briefly managed people at the young age of 25, and I didn’t think I was great at it. I didn’t really care if I ever did it again, but I told myself if I did get another shot, that I was gonna be really good at it. I felt an obligation to be good at it after going through so much toxicity on the other end. Thirty one year old me was going to be good at it.
A couple months into the job, my manager remarked to me “You’re pretty good at this,” in regards to managing. My instant response to her with a slight smile was:
“I’ve seen countless examples of what not to do, so I’m just kinda doing the opposite of that. And you’re also pretty good at this by the way.”
I felt as if I had it all. My confidence at work had never been higher.
I was a finalist for a quarterly company award in April, and multiple colleagues remarked that it was almost unheard of to be nominated only a few months in.
And then it all came crashing down.
In other times, I probably would have been in line for a promotion and raise. In a time of world upheaval and tightening budgets, I was informed on a Friday morning Zoom call with HR that I — and several of my colleagues — no longer had a job as of 11:34 am.
This is where having an excellent memory can be a curse because you remember everything so vividly, like my manager and I crying back and forth on a FaceTime a few hours later.
Money is often the first thing that comes to mind, but it’s also undoubtedly the most replaceable part of the equation. There’s a lot of ways to generate income when you’re between jobs, but once you have the rug pulled out from under you, it’s never the same, and announcing it to the world isn’t exactly fun.
Even though victims of layoffs did nothing wrong, the world brands you with a proverbial scarlet letter. Our jobs become an outsized part of our identities, and it really shouldn’t be this way, but American culture makes it so.
Yes, some folks are incredibly supportive, but you feel yourself consistently being judged. People who have never been through it stalk your LinkedIn profile like your unwanted and unasked for job search is meant to serve as entertainment for them.
Sure, the above stops when you officially get a new job, but the experience and subsequent trauma is ingrained in you forever.
There’s not a single work day that goes by where the thought doesn’t cross your mind that it could be your last. Meeting canceled? Signed out of email one morning? The facts of the meeting owner having a scheduling conflict or a password needing to be reset don’t matter. Your brain instantly fears the worst, thinking that ‘It’s happening all over again.’
Your heart races. Your body shakes. You wake up at 3 am with a nightmare of the above and are exhausted the following day because you weren’t able to fall back asleep.
You consider bailing on Succession with three episodes to go and not learning the ending because the Zoom layoff scene is so PTSD-inducing.
“The financial damage was minimal. The psychological and emotional damage was catastrophic.”
It doesn’t define you, but it’s a part of you in perpetuity.
If you’re reading this as someone who’s been through it, I know this wasn’t exactly uplifting, but know that you have fellow people out there who understand what it’s like on a deep level because you and I are part of a club. WE’RE part of a club.
We didn’t ask to join and hope to not have regular meetings. It’s not our goal to add new members nor grow additional chapters, quite the opposite actually, but we’ll always look out for each other and stick together.
We have no choice but to do so because we do it carrying the burden of knowing that it will never be normal again.
