YEAH, WHAT TÉODOR SAID
Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere–if nothing else, WordPress managed to get my annual re-up fee out of me literally a week ago, so you bet your collective ass I’ll be around at least another year out of sheer spite–but I am having a FEELINGS about this and I can think of no other place in the world in which I am quite so entitled to bitch up a storm.
I’ll allow it, but you’re on thin ice, counselor.
What the hell happened?
We’ve all been “laid off” before as long as a prospective new employer didn’t do too much digging, we all know this classic way, but in this case it’s actually true: I was caught in a wave of mutilation that cost at least 500 people their jobs and permanently closed at least half a dozen of our clinics. Turns out a literal, non-hyperbolic policy of constant growth above all other considerations wasn’t sustainable! Who’d-a thunk it. It was and is an unfolding slow-motion bloodbath, the fallout of a series of catastrophic financial decisions from the new CEO of our company, who claims to take “complete responsibility” according to a cancelled-celebrity-style apology video he sent out and yet, curiously, gets to keep his job; the only conclusion we can draw from that fact is that he must be able to do the work and offer the value of all of us combined. Maybe I’ll send him a note of congratulation on being so valuable and managing to escape the cull; maybe it’ll have glitter in it. (For legal purposes here in Arizona where the law is powerless to help you but fully empowered to punish you, that was a joke. A sparkly joke that you keep finding for months, and months, and months.)
That sucks, bud
Y’know you are not friggin’ wrong, friendo. This time last year, I’d been there about as long as I’d ever been at any job and was starting to get itchy feet as the charms wore off, the edges and corners beginning to dig in. But I made an active decision, did what I told myself was the grownup thing: I doubled down, decided to accept the job’s flaws, appreciate its merits, and make peace with employment that wasn’t my Calling but that let me pay the bills and work from home, the latter of which made up for quite a lot of other sins in the past few years, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you.
Well sure, saving on gas and whatnot.
*vague gesture*, Lunchables, etc.
Exactly, definitely nothing about a world-engulfing plague that made me terrified to leave my home and destroyed my faith that the people around me care for my safety and wellbeing. So I settled in to my Wattersonian mindset and, I can honestly say, got several years’ worth of video-gaming and comics-reading done on the clock. And now: this horse’s-shit.
This is the bottom line, and I know you’ve heard it from a hundred other people but I have an obligation to say it in case you needed to hear it from a hundred and one to believe it: your job does not care about you. The individual people might, but odds are they won’t be the ones calling the shots, a soulless corporate profit-algorithm so ravenous it makes the Ferengi look like socialists does. They’ll call you a big family and have gross potlucks where ham-slabs sit out for eight hours and send you company-logo tote bags and sexy thermal travel-mugs on your anniversary, and the instant a slightly more cost-efficient option presents itself they will lose your number but good, and contrary to what one might think from my tone (which I would characterize as more umami than bitter), that’s actually fair, I don’t blame them.
Yea–wait what
I’m a big ol’ nerd for certain kinds of things, among them contracts, both legal/formal and conceptual, and if there’s anybody to blame here it’s me for allowing myself to be bamboozled into doing one femtojoule more work than my side of the contract obligated me to, because they certainly didn’t take one step past the circle of theirs. As Fiddler On The Roof teaches us that the Bible teaches us, and I’m prepared to take Perchik’s word for it:
I forgot a scorpion was a scorpion and offer him a ride across the river on my comfy comfy frog-back, never stopping to think: what business does a scorpion have across the river? That’s not arachnid country! There’s nothing for him there! I mean, they say it’s a free country, but one has to wonder. What, are we not allowed to wonder anymore, to ask questions? No you’re being an arthropod-racist! Something something cancel carapace.
Well, fair enough, weird enlightenment-flex but okay; what are you bitching about, then?
I’m just tired, sad and tired. Not sad because I particularly loved this job, but because I ordered a smooth, comforting Reliable If Unexciting Employment and the server dropped off a Major Stressful Life-Change and then went on break. I’m so tired of starting over, of thinking maybe this will be the thing I can do and it won’t kill me inside and it’ll pay the bills and I just won’t have to worry about it anymore, and then it happens again just like last time, except now I’m older, shorter of breath, one day closer to death.
Dude didn’t you just turn thirty fo–
I feel six hundred million years old and I also feel I am allowed a little drama as a treat if that’s okay.
Yeah fair, the 2020s have been a helluva drug
Thank you.
I’m not actually that worried, our financial situation is fine as long as finding a new job doesn’t take too long, the most urgent part is the insurance and COBRA will let us keep that for a while, I just wanted to talk for a second bout how this fuckin’ sucks, and I appreciate being allowed the space to do so.
W–but this is your website
Correct! Thank you, me.
(Also, full disclosure: like, if it should happen that one of my readers has an in with a company who could use my ridiculous bullshit or even just a competent worker with healthcare-admin and team-management experience and a BA in Psych and wants to connect me and this becomes a heartwarming story of how blogging connects people and changes lives for the better that we all tell at BloggerCon 2035, I mean, who am I to stand in the way of that. One has to acknowledge the possibility! But it is certainly not anything I’m hoping for or expecting. Haha unless–)
Aw bud you almost made it all the way to the end of the post without hitting sweaty desperation
Listen, as the Britons say, needs must when the Devil drives; speaking of sweating, the current Devil is the AC guy who’s here right now making sure we’ll be able to survive this summer, and I don’t think he’ll accept payment in middlingly-clever, self-pleased blog posts.
Okay, well, I’ve got a resumé–rèsu–I’ve got a CV to update and a job-interview haircut to get so hopefully it has time to grow in a bit and doesn’t look like it could slice eight-hour slab-ham by the time I sit down with anyone. Thank you for your time, and if you can take one lesson from this, from your entire experience reading anything I’ve ever written, let it be this: the old ham is probably fine. It’s fine!
–The Bageler