Sure, it's a great opportunity to reflect, and I plan to do plenty of that. I've got some choices after this. I'll have some time to really ponder what it is that I want to do. I can put together some lists of pros and cons regarding being "let go." I can think about some of the things I can now do that I couldn't before because someone else told me what to do with forty hours of my life every week.
Being laid off though, no matter how kindly done, is being rejected. Sure, I get it, the site had to close. The real estate is expensive and we weren't using it to capacity and whoever is supposed to be selling accounts for our services wasn't doing a very good job. It was hard to justify the real estate in two buildings, both of which were less than half full.
Still, I'm sad, and a little miffed that I was dismissed so casually. Like I hadn't contributed anything to the company or its bottom line.
There are job available at Kaiser Permanente, but I'm not sure if I want to go back to full time immediately. I'm so tired when I get home at night.
One of the QAs had just gotten set up to work from home a month or so ago. She got a phone call. Some of us need these jobs, not necessarily for the money but for the commardarie, the shared common experiences, our desire to see people treated well.
We didn't get the same courtesy and that stings. Again, I get the business needs. But what about the needs of the people you employ? What about our psyches? Our - well, it doesn't much matter does it?
Optum/United Health Group didn't see we gave them value in any sort of way. Fine. We'll look for providing value to someone else. Some will retire, some will assist family members struggling with health issues, others will go back to school and finish those degrees.
All of us are left trying to make sense of it and make the best of it. We were tight in our little ten person community - all of us listening to calls and being outraged when we heard something egregious. So, we like each other and feel comfortable and don't really want to expend that sort of energy building new relationships all the while carrying around the wound of yet another betrayal in something we thought we could trust. Something we supported, something we gave forty or more hours of our lives to every week.
It's naive to think that we won't find the same things in other places. Of course we will. But the choice was taken away from us and that adds insult to injury.
I mentioned before that this is hard physically - the equivalent of a heart attack. The more humor we can bring to it, the more we can lessen that stress and help one another through this unasked for season of life. We did that today found humor in the irony of some of the things we are finishing up. Helping our comrades in cities across the country where they haven't been told our site is closed. We are sharing that with them because they want to know what is going on, why they can't find calls to review, why names have dropped from computer menus.
Most of us are 40 or over, and of that the bulk of us are in our 50's, some later 50's than others. We may be resilient, but not as resilient as we once were.
We were comfortable in this space we created together, this place called "work" and it was warm and safe and felt good, rather like a favorite pair of pajamas or slippers or sweats. We were able to be ourselves, hair up, down or removed altogether.
So, while we are pondering our next actions individually, we'll come together as a unit of friends and associates and do our best to buoy one another up. Truth be told, and I think I speak for all of us, we'd developed a kind of family among the QAs and when they moved us into building three we got closer.
Something like that doesn't happen overnight. It happens as we share our triumphs and defeats, overhear a tiny bit of conversation that we can relate to. Slowly the strands that connected us, grew stronger, weaving us together on a deeper level than just fellow analysts. We ask after our co-workers' dates, parents, kids. We find other bonds that make this particular group of people special.
I know I'm going to miss my QA pals. Maybe they'll even miss me. I know that the past three years my life has been super-enriched because they have been a major part of it.
And I think, because this is the information age, the age of the Internet, that despite not having a physical location to gather in daily, we'll be able to maintain our bond. That's my prayer anyway.