(Disclaimer: The following blog post is simply an account of a major event in my life and should in no way be construed as disparaging or abusive towards my former employer.)
"I'm sorry to inform you that your position has been eliminated and you are being laid off"
With those words, (or some approximation of them), 14 years and 5 months of employment at the Post-Dispatch came to an abrupt end. I got the call on February 22, about 20 minutes after I got home from work. My vice-president called me at home and asked me if I could talk. I sat alone in our darkened bedroom and listened as he said the dreaded words in conjunction with something like "continued declining revenues". He subsequently informed me that I had worked my last day and did not need to come to work the next day. As he finished reading from what was likely a pre-written script, I tried to process what was happening. An HR representative came on the line and gave me details of a severance package that would arrive overnight via FedEx.
So I then had to walk into the kitchen where my wife was preparing dinner and baking cookies and do the thing I swore to myself I'd never have to do: inform my wife I'd lost my job. She took the news well, with only a few tears shed. I was far from blindsided by the call, but it's never easy to take. Periodic layoffs had been a sad fact of life at the Post-Dispatch (P-D) for the last several years. When one of my colleagues got caught up in a layoff late last Spring, I knew in my heart that I was no longer safe and the P-D was no longer a place where I could be employed for the duration of my working life. (This assurance was issued to me by the man who hired me in 1997. He himself had started at the P-D as a young man and retired not long after company was sold in 2005.) I would have began looking for another job at that time, but I was busy preparing to get married to the love of my life. I decided to ride things out for the rest of the summer and then get started on a job search in the fall. Well, I got as far as asking for resume help from a career counselor, then didn't do anything more until January. I did check the online job search web sites periodically, but never seriously considered taking action.
When January rolled around, I finally got serious about creating a resume and spent most Monday nights working on it. (YES, I know I should have had that done years ago!) By early February, a series of events led to it being in the hands of a recruiter at a local IT recruiting company. President's Day found me sitting that company's meeting room talking to that recruiter and some of her co-workers. It felt a bit strange doing so, since it had been 14+ years since I'd had to dance this dance. I put on my best professional face and played the part of an IT professional looking to advance his career. I thought everything went rather well and was optimistic about my future with them.
By the following Thursday, I was unemployed.
