the BIG L
I am laid off lying in bed while on vacation at my aunt’s beach house. True story.
I get a text from my boss at 8:15am on a Thursday in August. He says he is sorry to bother me during my PTO, but has some urgent news to share. He calls me, and that news is read to me from a script written by a robot in Associate Relations. He cries. (Why are you crying, sir? You still have a job.) Six hours later, I finally get my “separation” paperwork via DocuSign, and am told they’ll mail me my things and that is it. Almost four years as a senior leader managing a team of 19+ people—through COVID, through covering two people’s maternity leaves myself, and countless other personnel and personal dramas. It ends with a twenty-second phone call I barely remember, a digital signature and some FedEx boxes. It’s like getting hit by a truck. One minute you’re alive, the next you’re dead.
After, I go downstairs into the kitchen, where my dad is cutting up a peach for his breakfast. He asks, “how did you sleep?” I say, “Fine. I was just laid off.” He puts the knife down and sighs. He goes to the screen porch to gather my mother, who comes inside to hear the news herself. The waterworks begin. I’m 38 years old and crying in front of my parents. My eyes don’t focus on anything without welling up. My face feels hot. I think I cry off and on for three or four days. I can’t control it, it’s my body’s favorite way of regulating the overflow of frustration, anger and sadness. My dad is just f*cking pissed—at my boss, at the company, at the CEO, at the bogus dream they sold me, and then for just spitting me out like it is nothing. He feels feelings I’m not ready to feel yet. My mom, bless her, is more quietly angry. It’s her way. She says, “They’ve treated you very, very poorly.” Mom is always right.
I know that I’m not in a unique situation here. This happens all the time, and is happening all the time, especially right now. But in your head you’re always like, “that won’t happen to me.” I also know: It doesn’t matter that I am great at my job, or that I have a gleaming performance record. It is not a factor that my team isn’t ready to self-manage, never mind all the creative work I personally contributed. It’s really as simple as this: My salary fit snugly into the Tetris puzzle of budget savings the consultancy firm needed to hit. A more junior person will now be forced to attempt to cover the jobs of 3 people. They will convince her it’s for the best, it’s a great opportunity, when in reality it’s something very different.
“This quarter, we will save XX million in payroll expenses,” proudly declares the CEO on the quarterly earnings call, just two weeks after blowing up my life. A day later, he is fired and promptly replaced by an executive from a mass market chicken and sausage distributor with zero fashion retail experience. (That is not a joke. It really happened. ) It’s great to know that my job and 149 others were obliterated as a last-ditch effort for a failed leader to save himself. That’s capitalism, baby.
I don’t have a step-by-step method of navigating this situation. I wish I did. I desperately scan through HBR articles about processing being laid off for a quick information fix. I have the facts and my burn book, but I know the only way out is through the feelings. And I hate this part—the feelings part. Reconciling the long emotional journey ahead of me with the fact that I didn’t ask for (or deserve) this is extremely hard. I’m in the deep end with no floaties and all I want to do is work the snack bar. Just let me get in the car and drive the five minutes to my office. Let me go to work, please. But it’s over.
People keep asking how I am and I don’t really know how to answer. I’m tired of talking about this, and yet it’s the only thing I can talk about. It’s my world at the moment. It is my whole life that’s changing, after all. The best way I can describe this experience is: a mess of feelings and every day is a different level. I’m Mario, and I’m hopping, running, jumping along dodging bad guys, looking for coins (ha!), facing off with Bosses (big, bad feelings) and sometimes emotionally falling off a cliff into a bottomless crevice.
Here are my levels:
LEVEL 1: ABJECT Terror
I am floored looking back on how much people wanted me to buy a house here. I was also told over and over again that it would be a great idea. I finally did that and 8 months later I’m unemployed. Cool. The fear is real: “How can I afford this? Oh wait, I can’t afford this.” “There are no other jobs at this level in this city. Sh*t.” “Oh God, I have to sell my house.” “Oh God, my health insurance ended the day they laid me off.” “Do I have enough medication?” “F*ck, f*ck, f*ck.” And so forth.
How to beat the level: Make a plan. But I can’t make a plan until I know where I’m going next. So I keep slamming the door in Terror’s face, but I know it’s still lurking.
LEVEL 2: Sadness
The abruptness of losing my team is the hardest part. I cared about these people very much, and I didn’t even get to say goodbye. It’s humiliating, it’s dehumanizing, and it sucks. And many of them initially reached out with promises of grabbing drinks and so forth, but that’s slowly phased out. It’s pretty quiet now. It’s like a death, I get it. Except it’s awkward as hell.
How to beat the level: Time. And you can’t really beat time, you just roll with it.
LEVEL 3: Anger
This is a personal favorite. I’m playing this level quite a lot. Because every single day I remember some other detail about what lead up to this reality and I get pissed off all over again—the stupidity of the whole thing, the way money was wasted by my leaders, how the company is run, and so many other factors. Anger is like a hot bath. I can soak in it for hours and days. And it makes me feel better, sometimes. That is, until I’m just tired of thinking about it and then I’m mad at myself for even being mad—for caring, still.
How to beat the level: Acceptance. Which I’m hoping writing all this out will help me feel.
LEVEL 4: Excitement
I remember thinking to myself one day, “I mean, I don’t really like Ohio.” I loved my job, and it was why I decided to buy real estate and lay down some roots here. But I don’t like Ohio. It means little to me. And I can leave. I can start fresh, do something completely different, or do something very much the same but for a company that values me. That’s awesome! I like this level, but I forget about it sometimes. I should visit more often. I like the music here.
How to beat the level: Get going! Fly free! And I will, ASAP.
LEVEL 5: spin cycle
Day-to-day, I have no idea which level my brain will spit me out into. It really could be anywhere. Yesterday, it was Anger. Today it’s somewhere between Acceptance and Excitement. But then I hit Anger again when someone asks how I’m doing and what happened and I tell them everything. Then they’re in the Anger hot tub with me. We’re doing shots. It’s Anger party time. On the other hand, it’s a beautiful day and I don’t have to be stuck inside hunched over a computer and fighting about process stuff and budget nonsense. That’s pretty awesome.
No Boss to beat here. You just go to sleep and start over.
LEVEL 6: Acceptance
What will it take to move on? Well, literally moving on, and probably letting some friendships go for my own mental health. It’s hard to stay connected to people still working for that place. The only thing I want to say it is, “get out, now.” I can’t reconcile why they think they’re safe when I wasn’t. I keep wondering, “what does it say about what they think of me?” That’s my brain doing imaginative things, yes. But these feelings are real, and I feel them more when I’m around those people. The reality is: I need to leave the community I’ve been calling home for the past 4 years, and stake a claim elsewhere, reconnect with other friends and that will be it. It’s sad, but is what it is. And that, my friend, is acceptance.
Thank you for tolerating this journey with me. I do not want to be here, and you know that. I have inner work to do on separating my identity from my work, because I am more than that. I was well into that journey with my therapist before any of this even happened, so now I’m just really going for it.
I appreciate the many who have been with me in support the entire way. Thank you for hyping me up and reminding me who I am and what I offer. It means so much. A journey through all of the feelings, all of the levels, is much easier with good friends. It makes me incredibly optimistic about what is next. Love you all (the bigger, better L).
P.S. You can poke around some of the work I did here. It has been therapeutic (and a pain in the ass) to gather all of this together. We did really cool things, and I can’t be sad about that.