Story - Part 1: The Layoff

It was April of 2001 when the company I had worked for for nearly 4 years finally hit the dirt for the last time. Our small startup, fueled by the dot-com expansions of the late 1990s, imploded on itself one last time, this time taking me with it.

I'd seen it before more than once, and been part of preparing for it before more than once, so when I saw the tell-tale signs of a layoff without warning, I knew that this time, I was in it. My usual lunch companions (or at least, those who were left at this point) left sheepishly, after muttering excuses about having to go to lunch early. Those of us left in the office received an email to come to the conference room for a meeting. I walked out into the hallway and found other people who hadn't put 2 and 2 together yet.

"What are we doing?" they asked.

"We're getting fired!" I shouted with enthusiasm -- "C'mon!" I broke into a Wizard of Oz skip on the short walk to the conference room. They stared at me like I'd lost my mind.

We'd seen it coming for ages. Our company had missed our IPO by less than 24 hours with the sudden downturn of the NASDAQ the previous fall, and a series of emergency measures to save us, including being purchased by another company, simply hadn't gained traction. Some of us held onto hope that we could at least package up our product so that eventually it would be saved. And it didn't hurt that the job market in our sector after the NASDAQ "tank" was weak, to say the least.

At the meeting, we were told of our separation packages, the COBRA benefits available to us, and thanked for our dedication in such a troubled environment. Personal information was exchanged. We returned to our desks to find that our network access had been cut off, and we had each been assigned an escort while we packed our desks, got our personal files from our hard drives, and exited the building. I remember a feeling of exhilerated freedom during my walk to my car -- quite the opposite of what I'd expected to feel at such a moment. Others trudged to their cars, voiced concerns about finding another job, walked with stooped shoulders. All I could think was "it's a beautiful day, and I'm finally given permission to go be a part of it."

I took in a deep breath of clean spring air and decided to go for a walk when I got home. I thought about how I could cut some expenses; after all, I was fairly recently divorced and paying the full mortgage on a house I had not expected to own on my own when we bought it several years before. I did have six months of salary saved, somehow -- in the early days of my separation and divorce, when I joked to my divorce lawyer that I feared "turning into a bag lady or living in a cardboard box," I'd also begun to save money compulsively, to be sure I could protect myself in just this kind of situation. In fact, I'd taken to throwing my loose change into a salad bowl on my dining room table, so that I'd always know that I had enough money to call for a pizza if I really, really wanted to. When I finally cashed in that salad bowl of change several years later, there was nearly $400 in it.

Filled with optimism and relief, I went home, hatching plans in my head for how I'd manage my job search and what I would do next.