The Axeman Cometh

So it finally happened.  The GFC (that's 'Global Financial Crisis', according to my friend Simon; personally I prefer 'Global Friggin Cockup') has claimed another victim: me.

I was not entirely surprised when I got the news last Thursday that I am being 'put at risk' of redundancy.  After all, business isn't what it was a year ago.  What has surprised me, though, is just how OK I am with the whole thing.  Now, don't get me wrong: I've been working for the last 24 years, so not working isn't something I've ever learned how to do well.  I also can't help feeling a certain sense of loss over leaving the company I've called home for the last 13 years.  Hell, I've practically grown up there.  But there is something really energizing about not knowing what comes next.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with UK labour laws, 'at risk of redundancy' means that I technically still have a job.  As far as I can work out, though, this job appears to consist mainly of sleeping in, catching up on my reading and sprucing up my resume.  They call this 'gardening leave'.  I'm supposed to use it to look for another job internally, though of course, if there were many jobs internally, we wouldn't be in this situation.  At the end of the 90 day gardening leave, I become a free agent.  I'll get a severance package and that, as they say, will be that.  13 years gone.

Let me be absolutely clear about this: I'm not bitter.  I'm not.  I was paid pretty well for my work, I got to do a number of really interesting things, I travelled a bit on someone else's dime. The company certainly doesn't owe me anything.  I'm also confident that it isn't because I was a poor performer, or because someone didn't like me, or because I smelled bad.  It's simply a case of being in the wrong role at the wrong time.  

So what will I do?  As I said, I had a strong feeling this would happen.  Michele and I talked it over well in advance, worked through a number of scenarios, and decided to pull the trigger on a plan we'd been cooking up for a while, that being to take the kids and travel.  We'd planned to do this in a few years, so the timing isn't quite what we'd have liked, but it's as good a time as any.

Unfortunately, the act of making significant decisions in the abstract and after a few glasses of wine is always fraught with danger, this decision no less so.  Last Monday evening, I noticed the email count on my blackberry starting to tick inexplicably backwards towards zero.  I assumed this meant that I would get the redundancy call on Tuesday.  As I watched the detritus of my daily work life float gently away - 700 mails became 680, then 650, then 600 - my first emotion was a tremendous wave of relief.  Finally, the uncertainty about my job, the waiting for the axe to fall, would be over and I could get on with living.  200 mails.  150.  100.  When the count reached 50, my euphoria was cut short by a wave of stomach-flip nausea brought on by the realization that I would be without a job, without a home, without any of the security I'd spent my adult life scrabbling for.  This forced me, on my journey home that rainy night, to consider what this really meant; and to conclude, logically, that having a job is better than not having one, especially when you've got kids.

Turns out that the incident with the blackberry was a total fluke.  Tuesday wasn't the day, Thursday was, and when I finally did lose my email, when that eventually happened, was completely unlike the experience of Monday night.  The temporary loss of my email was just a serendipitous event, because it forced me to think concretely about what losing my job really meant.

So for now, I'm keeping my options open.  There are other roles internally that would be interesting.  I have a strong network outside the company that I might be able to leverage.  Travelling is still a viable and attractive possibility.  There may be other outcomes as yet undreamt-of.  The possibilities are endless and I have the luxury of time to consider them.  Who wouldn't be OK with this?

The timing of the blackberry thing was kind of weird though.