083104-090204 - Adrift
As usual, slow posting = eventful life.
Sometimes, I wish it weren't.
The latest drama starts around 2:30 PM on Tuesday. The boss casually passes me in the hall and asks if I have a few minutes. Sure. One thing first - I'll be right there.
I meet him in the main conference room. He closes the door. We sit. He sets a blank manila folder, the kind we keep project information in, on the table in front of him. He opens it, takes out a typed letter, and passes it across the table.
And then begins explaining to me why I'm being laid off.
Not enough work, changing job approaches, so on and so forth, he says. It hurts him now, but it's gonna hurt me more later, he says.
I am a six-foot poker face.
It's an amicable split. No hard feelings. If I need a recommendation, just ask. I'm smart, and have drive - he'd be surprised if it took very long to find another job.
I have no idea how I am going to tell the lady.
The secretary will explain the benefits. Here's the agreement. Feel free to have a lawyer look it over. If you have any questions.
And so (I get to explain to everyone for the rest of my life) that's how my first real job ended.
*
There are a lot of options. The day after I got laid off, there was an automation conference downtown, and I shook my money-maker like my alma mater taught me, from which I got a lot of business cards and a few job recommendations. One top of that, this corner of the city is a surprising hotbed of robotics and automation - a quick search showed over 60 different companies, and that's not including the suburbs. One major robotics manufacturer has an office about two blocks from my old company, and their website says they're hiring. The place where I had my internship is hiring, too, and they're only ten minutes away. And that's not even tapping my contacts. I'm nervous, but I'm not yet worried.
And, if I had to pick a point in time to lose my job, this would be it. I'm signed up to take the GRE in the middle of this month, so this timing gives me a bit more opportunity to study for it. There's also some wedding things that need taken care of, and of course other tidbits here and there. Looking for a job is a job in itself, but I'll also have plenty of other things to keep me hopping.
It's kind of funny that, earlier that morning, I had been framing an LJ post about the mixed feelings I had about my job.
Now I have the chance to find one that suits me a little better.
I just wish we'd known about this a little sooner - like before we sent the wedding invitations out that morning.