Thursday, August 27th, I received an opportunity. I didn’t ask for it, though perhaps I should have been expecting it.
That day, my wife and I both got laid off.
It started pretty normally as days go. I had been working on the new inventory tracker for the equipment room at my workplace for most of the summer and had a demo on Friday. I was close to done, really happy with what had been finished so far. But I had this weird feeling of doom that actually woke me at 5:30 that morning. I’m not prone to these things and usually ignore them, and had forgotten about it by 9:00 when I was happily coding.
A bit before 10:00 am, my wife called me, very upset. She had walked into a meeting when she got to work, and they told her that she was being let go. We talked for a bit as she drove back the the house and agreed to have lunch. I went back to coding.
I went home for lunch and my wife and I talked about things we could cut back on, but I assured her that we would be fine: I had a good job, and there was no way they could let me go while they needed this equipment tracker that everyone was really happy with and was going to make tracking much easier. Right?
After lunch I went back to work, parked the truck and hopped out. I happened to glance down and spied a dead cicada. I got kind of excited about that, because I had been looking for something interesting to take pictures of. I worked at a photography school, so I was expected to have some of my photographic work hanging outside my office. I went past my boss’s office on my way to get a container for the cicada and I noticed the that school’s owner was seated in her office. That feeling of doom? I remembered it now, but I tried to put it out of my head. He being in the office didn’t have to mean anything, and it didn’t have to be about me.
But it was.
I walked back past the office with the container for the dead bug and my boss asked me to come in and sit down.
I wonder if you always know? Do you know what a verdict is before it gets levied? Does the nail know about the hammer before it falls? I did.
I squinted at her, looked sideways. “You’re laying me off, aren’t you?” Then I burst out laughing. It was probably not what they were expecting, but was exactly the right response for the tragi-comic day it had become. My boss and the owner were pretty quiet until the cackling died. They did the normal explaining when my last day technically was (Friday) and when my health insurance would run out (also Friday). They asked if I had any questions.
Could I hang on to my computer for a while? Yes.
Can I meet with my co-workers who would be taking over my duties immediately? Yes.
No other questions then.
Apologies, good wishes, promises of recommendations and I was out of the office. I grabbed the two unfortunates that would be taking over some of my instructing duties and who would be responsible for finishing the inventory tracker and making any updates. I think that is what upset me the most, that I wouldn’t be able to finish a project I had conceived, programmed and managed. I said my farewells to the people who were there, and who had helped me, packed up my office into the Little Green Truck and was out of work for the first time since I was fifteen.
Now what?
Bones?