Life After A Layoff. Dealing With Feelings of Injustice and Abuse.
This past month I went through a devastating blow to my career and my family. I was actively solicited away from a company and a job I enjoyed to work for a consulting firm. The lure of designing digital marketing campaigns for big name organizations such as American Express, HBO, and Microsoft was incredibly tempting. My former employer offered me an increase in pay and title to stay with the organization and it was really hard to turn them down — these were people that I enjoyed working with and a job I truly loved. I decided grabbing a new opportunity was a great chance to grow and demonstrate that I had the skill set to perform towards a larger audience.
52 days into the new job and on a Thursday night at about 10:35 p.m. I received an appointment request from the Vice President of Marketing Strategy asking to meet the next morning at 8 a.m. I was really surprised — other than my interview I had been on 2 or 3 group calls with this individual but I never had a one on one appointment. All night my mind raced wondering — have I done something wrong? Did I frustrate a client or not perform as expected? That night I slept for about 30 minutes — constantly getting up to review and inspect my presentations, campaign designs, and work performed over the past 52 days. Everything seemed ok — so what could the meeting be about? The appointment arrived and I was informed that I was part of a company layoff that involved over 20 employees in a company of 77 people. I was assured my performance was not in question — the organization had decided to discontinue the services of the department I was in. Absolutely perplexed I explained I had over 56 hours of billable work allocated to myself per week for the rest of the year based on client contracts — who was going to do that work? They explained the company was just not going to do it — step away, return money etc. Remaining work would be given to senior employees for another 30 days. Severance for employees that were being laid off? 1 week — WOW!
The following weekend was difficult to say the least — my wife was running a marathon and I didn’t want to burden her with this news prior to her race. Afterwards I shared the information with her, we both were upset but we realized there was nothing we could do. We had both been in this situation before so it was frustrating; however we never thought a company that actively solicits for a new employee would do a layoff so soon. This is the second layoff in 3 years for my family. We were caught off guard to say the least. During my final few days at the organization it was brought to my attention that this was the third “layoff” in the past year by this organization. During my hiring process no one bothered to inform me of these facts or I would definitely have not taken the job.
I’ve gone through extreme feelings of injustice and abuse — how could a company not have known that they would layoff people 52 days prior to actively soliciting for new employees? Why does a company turn down work when employees are ready and available to take it? Why did the people doing the interviews not say — we’ve had a lot of layoffs this year — FYI. Why do I keep asking questions that I’m never going to get a straight answer to?
I’m using my time and energy the best way I know how. I’m reconnecting with contacts I’ve known for years, looking for new opportunities, rebooting my social media and blogging. I’m trying to cram all the certifications I’ve promised myself to finish over the past year into a few weeks and I’m actively making appointments to network with associates.
I keep reminding myself I was caught in a situation I couldn’t control. I’ve quit kicking myself wishing for a time machine to go back 60 days and tell myself not to take the job — because there is no time machine and I made a choice based on the information delivered to me at the time. The theist in me wants to look for some higher reason all these things happened — maybe I wasn’t loyal, maybe I need to learn a specific lesson, maybe my experience was designed to teach someone else a lesson? The pragmatist in me keeps chanting the mantra “SHIT HAPPENS”.
