Your Job Will NEVER Love You Back

A term packet and a life-long lesson learned. This is my lay off story.

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.”

― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

People used to seek out a job for “stability.” Some still do. But with the mass layoffs of 2023 and those already kicking off 2024, the fragility of a job has never seemed more apparent to me.

To add insult to injury, there is often a disturbing lack of respect and dignity shown to those impacted during the layoff “process.” Salt in an already festering wound.

A cold email. A couple of lines of text. Role eliminated.

Being asked to put a presentation together for your boss’s boss and, upon arriving at the conference room, realizing that Human Resources is the only one giving a presentation that day. Job over.

It’s like a death. Something to be mourned. A death of a lifestyle. A death of community. A sense of belonging. A version of ourselves. And sometimes the feeling of our whole identity. Gone.

“Who am I if I am not an employee of _____?”

“What will I say when I’m asked at dinner tonight, ‘So, what do you do for a living?”?

This is my layoff story.

It was 2014. Just four months after tying the knot, I accepted a role with a nice pay bump as a HR Analyst for a NH tech company - one of the few tech companies in NH. I was so excited and felt like I landed a “big girl job” with some bragging rights.

Given it was over an hour away, Peter and I made the decision to relocate closer to this new job. It was a whirlwind. New marriage in a new home in a new state for a new role in a new space.

New. New. New.

Instead of my early days being filled with excitement and wonder at all this newness, I was nail-bitingly, hand-rattlingly anxious. Sick to my stomach with dread.

Why, you ask?

I don’t say this lightly. But my new boss was a wretched woman. A total, utter, and complete B-I-T-C-H. One of the most bitter and cruel people I’ve ever met.

To make matters worse, she seemed to have a special distaste for me.

Try as I might, I could never make her happy with my work. On multiple occasions she publicly and audibly humiliated me for all my cube-farm mates to hear.

Once, while I was en route to the restroom, she demanded to know where I was going. After explaining nature’s calling, she screamed at me to hurry up. Weeks later I would be diagnosed with a bladder infection from holding it.

Unfortunately, there is no Human Resources for Human Resources. There was no one I could turn to for help. The other HR leader in this department was super chummy with her. I was shit out of luck.

Just 3 months after signing on for this hellish assignment, the new year came around and along with it rumors of annual labor reductions.

Being in HR we had the early scoop - each department (with the exception of HR) would be forced to reduce its headcount by 10%. By mid-January all departments had identified their ill-fated few and I was handed THE LIST. A list with of the 70 souls who would be let go.

I was given a week to secretively prep all the term packets in a corner of our windowless HR supply closet. When I emerged for water or coffee I would walk by the people whose names I had the misfortune of seeing over and over again on that list. I did my best to smile.

Finally, it arrived. The last day of the last week in January, the week I dreaded most. The day of the layoffs.

Upon returning from her lunch, my boss asked me to prep one more term packet.

“That poor soul,” I thought as I made my way to the HR supply closet to assemble another fateful folder.

I exited the supply closet, packet in hand, and walked over to my boss’s office in which she and the other HR manager were chatting. As was often the case.

Extending my arm, I reached across my manager’s desk to hand her the freshly prepped term kit. Her hands remained still. Folded on top of her desk.

“You can actually keep that one. That one is for you.”

Dumbfounded, I continued holding the folder straight out in front of me, not able to lower my outstretched arm.

It couldn’t have been longer that 10 seconds. Time stopped. My arm stopped responding to my brain. I couldn’t lower it.

NEVER. Not once did it occur to me that I was prepping my own term kit.

It was my 17th week in my “cool” new role at this “cool” new company. And one more folder later. It was over.

In the background I could sort of hear my manager cooly giving me a high level overview of what this folder contained entailed.

Random words here and there trickled in: “…weeks severance…COBRA…premium…information…unemployment.”

Believe it or not, despite the fact that I had assembled 70, excuse me, 71 term packets, I never really absorbed the information contained with the documents. And certainly not at this moment.

It wasn’t until her last part that my brain could finally tune back in,

“We are considering this a layoff so you can file unemployment. I would do it if I were you. Any questions?”

“What do I do now?” I managed to croak out. Finally lowering my arm.

“We have a box already set out on your desk,” she said. “Please go and collect your personal things and make your way out to the parking lot. We ask that you do not stop to speak to anyone on your way out otherwise we will have someone escort you out of the building.”

I was speechless. No handshake. No “thank you for your time or service” or whatever I thought people were supposed to say.

Standing up, packet still clutched in my hand lifeless hand, I quietly thanked them (because that’s what I do) and left.

And there it was. An open cardboard box, as promised. Sitting inconsolably on my desk. Waiting for me.

When me and my cardboard box got outside, I pseudo-laughed. I sobbed. I called Peter. And I learned a harsh but important lesson…No job will ever love you back. No job is secure.

Good jobs, hellish jobs, boring jobs, cool jobs, menial jobs, big jobs. They will never love you back.

Business is business. No family here.

I share this story to encourage you to think outside the box - (pun intended, but maybe poor taste? Maybe not) - the box being your current job.

To foster an identity that is much bigger than your job. To diversify your interests. To invest in your hobbies, your passions, your education. To invest in yourself.

You don’t have to build an empire. Hell, you don’t even have to have a side hustle. But you should keep leveling up your skills, continue to learn new things, to keep an open mind to new possibilities, and to keep filling your own bucket. To be better insulated from the pain when/if the rug gets yanked out from underneath you.

I couldn’t be more grateful for that little term packet.

Signed, sealed, and delivered. From me, to me.

A lesson learned, forever. The job will never love you back.

But you, my friend, can definitely and should definitely love yourself.

—Lauren

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Cupalo Conversations Podcast:

Episode #5 LinkedIn Unlocked: Cultivating Real Connections & Your Authentic Voice with Liam Darmody

Past Episodes:

• Episode #4 Embracing Neurodiversity: Unraveling Tech's Gender Imbalance with Rachel Lockett

• Episode #3 How Secure Are We Really? On Cybersecurity With Paul Robinson

• Episode #2: On Leaving Your 9to5 & Building the Life You Really Want with Alex Bush, CFP

• Episode #1: The Interview Experience with Eric Hunsberger. Are Coding Challenges Dead?

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Meme of the Week:

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Book of the Week:

Be: A No-Bullsh*t Guide to Increasing Your Self Worth and Net Worth by Simply Being Yourself by Jessica Zweig

It starts with you, simply being you. When you fully step into yourself and share yourself, you become not only a magnet for the opportunities you seek…but an example of awakening as well. Your freedom in simply being is permission for others to be themselves too. Something they have been waiting their whole lives for, and most of them don’t even know yet. You get to be the eye opener. The game shifter. The world changer. And how do you really change the world.

One person at a time.

Start the domino effect. 

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