Whiplash

Well, last week was interesting and by interesting, I mean it was a crazy complicated clusterf*ck. Honestly, I better have gotten all of my 2019 drama out of the way. Although my blog usually covers cancer and travel, I need to unpack what went down last week; and since my blog is, um my blog, this is the outlet I’m using. You can totally skip this post if you want. Heck, I might not ever read it after posting because it’s one gory mess I’m about to share.

I mentioned there was some massive uncertainty on the job front that I was dealing with for the last month or so. I have a finely-tuned ability to detect patterns (which is a nice way of saying that I usually freak people out because they think I have ESP or something; I can’t explain it, I just know things are going to happen a certain way. It’s either intuition, ESP, or this pattern-detection thing going on in my brain. Since I’m scientifically-minded, I choose the pattern-detection option.)

Anyway, I felt strongly that I was on the chopping block for the last month or so. Even though I am a really hard worker, there was a combination of factors lining up against me: a passive manager who would probably cut his own mother to save his skin; the fact that I don’t sit in HQ; the woman helping to run the whole “who gets cut” discussions dislikes me for reasons I still can’t figure out but she is part of a group of “mean girls” that could put junior high schoolers to shame; and a departmental leader who once made incredibly inappropriate comments to me one night when he got way too intoxicated (and to my everlasting shame, I did not report him because despite the advances of the MeToo movement, most women who do report shit like that get punished in a variety of unpleasant ways unless there’s video and audio evidence and even then, the women are often told they’re lying or too sensitive before they’re put on a hit list).

Because of all of these factors and a few others to boot, I just knew that I was going to get the old “we have to lay you off” speech last week. Right after the New Year holiday, I told a few people on other teams that I was likely not going to be around after Firing Day and asked what could I do to help wrap up projects so they weren’t left hanging. Two directors not in my department basically told me I was crazy and that I shouldn’t worry because they had put in glowing recommendations for me based on the work I was doing with their teams. And while that was nice, I didn’t think it would make any difference.

I actually felt so strongly about my impending doom, I took an empty backpack into the office last Friday with the express purpose of cleaning out my desk so I wouldn’t have to do that right after the “conversation” (because there is nothing more embarrassing than leaving your office building with a cardboard box and a tear-stained face).

So, it was not a surprise when I went into a conference room early last week and saw the HR guy sitting in the room. “We’re really sorry, we have to let you go, blah, blah, blah”. The whole time, my (former) boss just sat there, no apologies, not doing or saying anything to soften the blow. Whatever, I knew it was coming, right? I left the room and started throwing away stuff left on my desk. And right before I shut down my laptop for the final time, I replied to a message from one of the directors I had spoken to about my premonition. He had pinged me to ask how my meeting went. I let him know that I was about to turn in my laptop and badge and asked him to stay in touch.

So, I said goodbye to a couple of people and then went home to cry before prepping for a phone interview I had later on in the afternoon (what, you think I’m not going to think ahead and start sending out resumes and lining up interviews). And while I was telling this recruiter about how awesome I am and why they would want to bring me in to talk to the hiring manager, my other phone started ringing like crazy…and then text messages starting pouring in. Because I was, you know busy trying to get a new job, I ignored that phone until I was off my call. And there was a message from that director I pinged earlier in the day, asking me to call him back ASAP.

Long story short, he basically offered me a spot on his team for a guaranteed nine more months. I would be considered a full-time employee. I would get to keep all of my benefits. And while he wouldn’t make any promises, he would do whatever he could to make me permanent once he got headcount before the nine-month deadline. But the kicker was that I needed to tell him right then whether I accepted those terms because once it hit 5pm my time, I would be deactivated in the system and then I would be ineligible for the offer because at 5:01pm I would be considered a former employee.

So I went from my company telling me, “you suck, we don’t need you, hit the road and don’t ever come back” to “wait, we love you, please come back” in the space of 3 hours. Despite feeling that I was in the twilight zone, I had really wanted to be on his team and really feel that he would be a much better manager for me; so I accepted this strange Faustian bargain. I’m no longer in the department that kicked my ass to the curb and I’m basically taking my career into totally unknown territory.

So, everything is all good in my hood, right? Well, yeah; but I found out the next day when I returned to the office, raised from the dead like Lazarus, that there was some seriously f’ed up information that I didn’t know the day before. A number of people were given the heave-ho the day before. So I wasn’t the only chump on the chopping block. No big news there, since it was announced that there would be layoffs. But I found out that out of the 300 or so people given the news, there were only two that didn’t get a “transitional” deal, meaning everyone except two people were told their final day of work would be at some point 2-9 months in the future. Guess who was one of two?

Ok, that’s jacked up. Why in the world was I not given the same consideration as pretty much everyone else? I’m not a security risk. I was still working on stuff that is sorta important to the company. I’m not making a million dollars a year, making me too expensive to keep on a second longer. But to make it even more f’ed up, I found out that the director that pulled me back from the brink of unemployment told the person from my department that was running the “who gets fired” discussions weeks ago that if I was on the cut list, he was interested in bringing me onto his team. (And allegedly, another director told her the same thing.)

So, not only did I get pushed out of the door quicker than 99.9% of the others, it sure felt like it was done to guarantee that there was no way to give other people any time to get me on their teams before I was considered persona non grata at my company. My new boss kicked into action the second I told him and moved heaven and earth to broker a deal that I’m still not sure how he managed to pull off n the time constraints he was under; but had we not had conversations ahead of time and had he not reached out to me to ask what happened the second I started throwing stuff into the garbage can, I likely would have gone home and not reached out to anyone for the first 24 hours while I sulked. And by 5pm, I would have had no chance whatsoever to get his offer to stay on.

What the hell happened? My best guess is that the “mean girls” crew thought they could eliminate me before anyone else knew I was out and could offer me a new role in the organization, ensuring that I was on the unemployment line. My departmental leader obviously approved the plan so perhaps he thought that getting rid of me quickly and quietly would ensure that I would never talk to anyone about his inappropriate comments to me without it making it sound like I was just someone with an axe to grind. My former boss obviously didn’t fight for me, either because he was trying to save his own job or because he was in on the plan and not actually the friend I thought he was. All of those things may or may not be true. The fact of the matter is that it is my perception this was a calculated decision to push me out the door as quickly as possible. And that is malicious as hell.

The funny thing is that karma boomeranged quickly. By the end of the same day that I was told I was no longer needed, effective immediately, I had an offer to join the team that I really wanted to be on in the first place. Is it a perfect scenario? No, because of that nine-month thing. But I have absolute faith in my new boss that he would be upfront with me and do whatever he can to convert me as soon as he has headcount.

The people that tried to push me out now have been exposed to other groups that they are not to be trusted at all and actually stabbed other departments in the back by not giving a damn about anyone else’s desire to keep me on. They went through this process and they still didn’t achieve their goal of getting rid of me. I’m still here. And I’m keeping my desk where it is. I like my desk. I am not the one that should feel awkward. I was so valuable to someone that they bent over backwards to make sure I stayed on. I wasn’t the one who was a sneaky motherf’er. My former boss will have to walk past me every day to get to his desk and see all of the signs that people put up on my desk last week, telling me how happy they are that I’m still here. (Because oh yeah, I’m keeping those around! It was extraordinarily gratifying to get all of the hugs and messages from my officemates who were genuinely happy I am still around.)

Karma may have given me quite a ride last week, but I feel incredibly fortunate that she gave me a front row seat to watch her in action rectify a bullshit dirty move so quickly. I may have whiplash, but I also ended up on the winning side of this situation.