The final day

A few days before, I received an email explaining how the last day would be carried out. The employees at headquarter were told to come into a room at their appointed time to sign for their final check and severance package. As I was part of the field team, I would receive a phone call instead. That call was scheduled for 2:30 pm yesterday, with the expectation that FedEx would deliver my termination paperwork by 8:30 that morning. Somehow, the whole layoff did not seem real to me until the Last Day. 

On the morning preceding the call, I tried to busy myself with other matters. When call came, it was late and on my home number. Somehow that irked me a bit since I remembered giving my cell number. The call coming to my home number felt like an invasion of my personal life. It made all this unpleasantness downright spiteful. Of course, I don't think HR meant to do that, but it felt that my home, where my children slept and played and felt protected, was not safe from the touch of this disagreeable affair. It made me dislike the HR person and the task that she had to carry out. At the moment my husband informed me the call came on the home number, I understood why people disliked HR. 

I would like to be clear that I have nothing against this HR person at all. In fact, we spent time together at the company's sales meeting as well as during my first training session at Complete. She had told me about the elaborate surprise birthday party she had planned for a friend. I thought that was rather nice of her to do. I thought it took a great person to do so much for a friend. It was very unselfish of her to make those elaborate plans to ensure someone's happiness -- even just for those few hours.  But during the call with HR yesterday, I suppose it was because she delivered the final blow to end my employment that I developed a dislike for her. She tried to appear concerned, but somehow her efforts seem trite. Then again, she probably had been saying the same things to twenty other people throughout the day before me. 

I was wrong, however. The final blow actually came after the call when my email address was cut off. It was as if my umbilical cord to the company was cut. All the ties were severed. This was it: I was no longer part of the organization. My resources had been cut off. I could no longer feed off the knowledge of my colleagues. I could no longer go back. There was no way back. Perhaps this was a good thing after all. Every umbilical cord needs to be cut before growth or development can occur. Mine just got cut prematurely. I could survive and grow from this experience, or wither and succumb to all the negatives of the layoff. I think you will know which path I choose when I announce my next employer.