It's been a while since I was laid off and now that I have a full time job again, I feel like I can share some of the thoughts and feelings I went through during this period. Some of the next few posts may not be cheery, because it was hard to maintain a positive attitude throughout all of this. I'll try not to be too depressing.
The first thing I thought when I was told we were being laid off was "This can't happen to me." I'm a college graduate! I'm working for a company with offices in France, Germany, Sweden, England and Spain! I go to weekly meetings where I'm told my division is doing fine and the company is happy with us! Then we were called into a "mandatory meeting" and given our walking papers.
It was a completely miserable feeling made worse by the fact that I carpool with my fiancee. We got laid off around 11am and she wouldn't pick me up 'til 5pm. Luckily, they were pretty gracious with us and let us back into the building if we needed to. I grabbed lunch with a friend and exited the building around 2pm. I sat in the park across from the office for about 3 hours until she pulled up to get me.
One kind of sad things is that I will probably never trust a company again. I will always keep my resume up to date and be checking job boards every so often just to see if there are better opportunities out there. It was one of the worst feelings in the world to have the carpet yanked out from underneath me.
As I was saying goodbyes to a few people at the bad place, this one dude came up and we had a conversation that kinda went like this:
Dude: "Oh, you should enjoy your time off."
Me: "What?"
Dude: "Yeah, relax, take a trip. Go to Europe."
Riiiight, because last minute trips to Europe are dirt cheap and I can surely afford one over the next month when I won't be making any money. Brilliant idea, jackass.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
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3 comments:
What a dipwad.
I'm glad that you're once again employed, and must tell you that your seemingly secure job being lost was a reality check for me, too! If it can happen to you, it can happen to anyone.
:(
i know... it sucked :( on the bright side, you made some awesome friends, especially one in particular ;)
you shoulda drop kicked that guy.
Different people do different things when they're on unemployment. Long story, but I know someone that got laid off during the dotcom bust. He spent a long time trying to find a job and was really stressed out about it but he finally got something; during that time some of his friends that were laid off at the same time went on trips to Europe and Asia and then found jobs when they got back, which was the same time he found something.
I would be the guy stressing out. I would not want to be in that situation. And I probably would have punched that dude right in the face.
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