Nearly three years ago, I was fired from my job; a casualty of the post-9/11 economic downturn. After 18 months of looking for work without success, I sat down to write a book, entitled, "Blown Job: an unemployment odyssey." Here's an excerpt from Chapter One.
Chapter 1 - Are You Still Here?
You know those moments that you’ll never forget –your first kiss; the day your favorite celebrity died; the introduction of the blue M&M? You can remember exactly where you were that day; what you were doing; who you were with. Every detail is memory-fresh. All someone has to do is say a trigger word, and back you go in time.
Well, that’s not how I recall the day I got fired. The whole experience is a blur. I can remember that I felt like I was drowning – water rushing around my head; unable to breathe, knickers in a twist. That’s how I felt as the designated ax wielder mumbled into his beard about 9/11 and a weak economy and belt-tightening and union negotiations and severance and accrued vacation and a bunch of other stuff that I didn’t catch.
I do recall my immediate reaction as I came up for air: don’t blame this on 9/11, you dickhead. We’re 60 blocks uptown and this is four months later. Blaming my job cut on 9/11 was like saying there is no Santa Claus because my parents went to Barbados for Christmas and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. How far can the ripple effect of 9/11 be stretched in order to explain away ill-conceived business decisions?
Okay, I’m fired. But wait. Is this guy asking me to stay on? Damned right, he is. Stay a month, he says, possibly two. Right after he fires me, he asks me to stay on.
Me: So I’m fired, is that what you’re saying?
Him: (into beard) Uh-hmm.
Me: But you want me to stay?
Him: (into beard) Uh-hmm.
Me: So I’m not fired yet?
Him: (into beard) You’re fired, but not for two months.
Me: Kind of like a death sentence, isn’t it?
Him: (into beard) Uh-hmm.
Well, of course, at that moment I had to spit in his eye, pull his bushy beard, tell him to take shove the job so far up his ass that it won’t be out before Arbor Day, and storm out, leaving a trail of parfum by which to be remembered. Yeah, that’s what I should have done.
What I did do was stay the extra two months, enduring the awkward silences and furtive stares and tactless questions of those lucky enough to be spared the unkindest cut of all. Now who’s the dickhead?
*********
After the initial shock wore off, my first order of business was to bring home all of the stuff I had accumulated in my office over the years. Gee, you wouldn’t think a little cubicle could hold so much. But damned if I didn’t have the motliest collection of umbrellas and books and shoes and CDs and tapes and magazines and pictures and tchotchkes. I kid you not: every day for the next two months I carried some of this crap home and it was only by sheer luck that I took it all by the last day. I felt like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape, dispersing bits of dirt in the yard in order to excavate a tunnel.
*********
Once I got my priorities straight, I was ready to do my assigned work until my departure date. Problem was, I didn’t anticipate the reactions I was receiving from my co-workers, who were now grouped into three categories: the honest ones, who came by to say that they were sorry about what happened and were sad to see me go; the cowards, who studied the cheap industrial carpeting whenever they passed me in the hall; and the self-absorbed, who addressed me as though nothing had changed. As one month bled into another, I noticed a look of incredulity in their eyes, which, late in the game, was articulated by one of my more tactful colleagues. “Are you still here?,” she said as she passed me on the stairs. Gosh, that made me feel good.
To a person, though, they shared one obvious sentiment: Thank God it wasn’t me. Management had cut a dozen people from the payroll. By the second month of my extended stay, I was the only one of the dozen still around. I think that my presence discomfited everyone. I was an unpleasant reminder of the purge that they had dodged, and certainly, the sooner my visage disappeared from their retinas, the better it would be for everyone.
*********
My secretary, who also was canned and was asked to stay on a month, promptly stopped working five minutes after she was axed. Oh, she showed up every day, but she ignored every request that I made and let the incoming work pile up and talked on the phone to her family and friends from 9:05:03 AM to 4:59 PM. I tried to motivate her, but, frankly, my heart wasn’t in it.
Me: Have you run last night’s report?
Her: No.
Me: Will you please do it now?
Her: (nothing)
Me: Okay, then!
My supervisor, who had adopted a laissez faire policy regarding my department on the very day she inherited it, stopped speaking to me several days after my excision. I really should have known something was up weeks before, because I had been calling her almost daily to sit down and discuss my performance review.
Me: Can we sit down to discuss my review?
Her: I have too many meetings this week.
Me: Well, can we do it next week?
Her: (nothing)
Me: Okay, then!
In reality, she made every conceivable excuse for why she couldn’t sit down with me. I initially chalked it up to her indifference, but I put the pieces together once I had been canned. She actually told me that she had no idea that I was going to be fired, but I think you will agree with me when I say that she was incontrovertibly full of shit.
**********
And so, the day finally came when I walked out of the double glass doors for the last time. No one came to say good-bye or to wish me luck. There were no balloons or cake or flowers or cards that said, “We’ll miss you THIS MUCH!” No one came to help me carry out the last of my junk. Nobody asked for my address so that we could keep in touch. The saddest thing of all was that the guy at the sandwich shop next door finally had learned to make my morning iced coffee just the way I liked it and for what? For what, I ask you.
I didn’t care about any of it. I was already thinking about the next phase of my brilliant career. Before I left, I made an appointment for the following week at a career counseling center that offered lots of free services to schmucks like me; hardworking, unlucky dopes who were now unemployed.
As I stepped onto the pavement, I was hit by a wave of feelings: freedom; a sense of possibility; a release of pressure; a sense of doom. I had no idea of the long, strange trip upon which I was about to embark. All I knew at that moment was that I never had to go back there again, and I was glad.
In retrospect, I only wish that I had stolen more office supplies.
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