Getting laid off — just to see if you laugh
I responded on one thread about how leaving a company (quitting or getting laid off/fired), is the same as a couple breaking up, so let’s see who likes this, I was just getting over a health crisis and this happened, I can only hope others will laugh and learn.
Being “Let Go”
So just as my health was getting better and I was tolerating the workload since I thought I would have a few weeks to relax and recover, my manager called me into his office on a perfectly normal day and, obviously reading a script, said I was being “let go” because of the “business climate.” I was to remain in his office until all the “safe” employees left the building. I would then be “chaperoned” into the large conference room to be briefed by the HR person.
At first, I was too stunned to believe what was going on, but it began to sink in as the “non-safe” employees sat around the table and the HR person handed out our packages to go through. We were then to be chaperoned again while we packed our belongings and left the building, in theory for the last time. In the 90’s, I was part of two layoffs, one as a manager doing the laying off and once as a manager getting laid off, and the process then was quite civilized. You left the building but for the next few weeks there was an area with desks and personal computers, so you could “set up shop” and use their facilities to look for a job. The HR person at that time was very nice to me and made the transition to COBRA health and the lump sum payment simple and easy.
But this was a global economy layoff, and they wanted you out of the company as quickly and cheaply as possible. The HR person was doing her usual crocodile tears routine and said how sad this all was. All I could think of was my mom being invited by Mrs. Hudson (the wife of the then President of Hampton Institute) and Mrs. Hudson’s meaningless emoting when saying she was so sorry that Dad was being screwed. (See La Dolce Vita.) I then began doing my deep breathing exercises (such as the bellows breath), and since I knew the HR person knew my condition she was probably panicking; she could imagine me stroking out and dropping my dead head on the table, which would have upset her timing in getting rid of us.
We were all in a daze, signing forms that basically said we agreed to being laid off and having no legal recourse. Our package was structured; instead of being paid a lump sum, you would get a “normal” paycheck until the package sum was paid. I assume this was to smooth out the payments for the accounting department.
We then went back to our cubes to pack, and there were no moving boxes available. So, this layoff was either a complete surprise to lower management or just an example of incompetence. I had to put 10 years of my books and equipment (I had taken photographs of the company’s products with both my camera equipment and that of the company) in small, ludicrous makeshift boxes. Moreover, while we were signing the forms in the conference room, the IT person had locked our accounts. This is where layoffs today are so brutal and stupid. In previous layoffs there was usually a rumor about what was going to happen, and the weekend before you could leisurely pack your belongings in your own moving boxes and take any personal files from your desktop. But today no employees trust their company and no company trusts their employees, so the paranoia about employees carrying out sabotage becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. None of us had any truly “sensitive” company information. Meanwhile a Snowden has truly classified information and is issued a PC that has a USB port.
The Health System When You are Unemployed
The reason I wish to recount all of this is that the COBRA for me was important since I was now seeing many specialists at places like Duke and really needed to keep them, regardless of the high cost. (When I was laid off in the 1990s, you got six months of company insurance before COBRA kicked in, but that world was long gone.) So I wasn’t going anywhere, and my top priority was to work with the HR person and be sure the COBRA did begin and that I had the same policy.
And here is where the new paradigm (unless you are vigilant you will be a victim of incompetence or malevolence) kicked in. During the layoff, we signed a form if we wanted to get COBRA insurance so that our health insurance policy would continue with no gaps. That night I went to my pharmacy to get my anti-anxiety prescription. The pharmacist looked me up, and said my health coverage had been terminated. So here the company was focused and competent. The next day I went to see the HR person who then called her contact with the insurance company, and the contact assured us that all was well, that there must’ve been some mistake and I was now on the COBRA policy.
I went back to the pharmacy that evening and they said, “Why are you here? You are still listed as terminated and not covered.” One can see how this can contribute to your state of anxiety, so I went back to the HR lady again and said I wasn’t leaving until this was figured out. One advantage of being laid off is that work no longer “puts a dent in your day” and your daily schedule does free up. By pushing and pushing we got to the core of the issue; the form looked like it said by just signing this form all the current information on your file was valid. But the contact person realized that unless you filled out all the fields with all the redundant information, it would not be processed. So we literally went through every field on the form to ensure all the fields that had to be completed were. I then asked about the others who wanted to be on COBRA, and we realized all those who wanted to go on COBRA would have to be contacted to keep their health insurance. The reason I found out was because I was the first to try to actually use my COBRA insurance.
I then went to my desk where the IT person would watch me take off any personal files. But since he had “rolled up” the desktop and had it on another machine, the directories and files were jumbled up, and it took 10 times as long to find the files.
While at my old desk, the site lead was the first to drop by. We had had a long relationship, and he showed common sense when my previous manager said I needed to fire a contractor because he was charging $80/hour for 10 hours a week, when I should hire a contractor at $50/hour for 40 hours a week (there is a Dilbert cartoon right there.) I thought the site lead would at least say he was sorry it had to end this way. Instead, he went into supermodel mode, saying I needed to “move on” and “leave this place behind” as if all the long nights and weekends I worked here to help meet deadlines meant nothing. Or as the supermodel says when leaving a husband, “Remember when I said I would be with you until the end? Well, this is the end.” Afterwards, another still employed worker overheard us and said to me “that was the most bizarre conversation I’ve ever heard in a corporate setting.” (That worker would himself be laid off two years later.) I again thought like my Mom, since the site lead should have resigned as the layoffs were an obvious sign he was no longer making decisions for the site; I found out later he hung on for six months getting a high salary and benefits for doing very little, until he was let go with I’m sure an excellent package. Money usually trumps self-respect.
While I was thinking like my Mom, my current manager dropped by and invited me into his office and closed the door. Here is where I got “the talk” that I expected from the site lead, but since nothing would change, this conversation was just as silly as the supermodel talk. For some reason, the 15-minute conversation, where the manager assuages his own guilt and does nothing to change the situation, turned into two hours. For the last hour and forty-five minutes, my mind wandered as I thought about truly useful things I could be doing with this time, such as cleaning my gutters. I guess the dump scenes by the supermodel or the guilt-ridden are two sides of the same coin.
So now I did have an unpaid leave of absence, although the length of the leave could be from one week to forever. I went to my financial advisor and said with my mild PTSD maybe I should retire or at least take a year off. One should always have a financial advisor, even though they are really only for the four percent (the one percent have lobbyists). Their job is to lay out various investment strategies but also give unvarnished advice about life issues such as taxes and getting health care. So like any advisor she said the truth, that with my elevated blood pressure, “You are basically screwed,” since I would soon no longer have COBRA, Obamacare was not completely in place, and the North Carolina politicians were doing everything possible to stop the program. In Europe, the social contract says being laid off should not mean an end to health coverage. For a lot of people in the South, there is an unwritten rule; if you cannot find work or are unhealthy, it is better for all concerned that you die in your 50s, with the magic number being around 58. Refer to The South in Transition.
It was strange being suddenly unemployed in the middle of fall; the falling temperatures lined up with your view of the world as you now had a “hunker down” mentality. IBM usually does their layoffs in November (called by IBM’ers the annual Turkey Shoot), so it must make for a bleak Christmas. What makes being laid off so ironic is that before you were saying if you just had some free time you would do this and that. And now that you had the time you were too worried about the future to actually do this and that, and if you did take time to do this and that, you would be under pressure every moment you were not looking for a job. But I decided to work on some things that mattered to me for a few months. But for those with children in college it must be a stressful time, and pretty catastrophic if the family has to buy private health insurance, which in a free market would rival a monthly mortgage payment.
Note: You also learn when being laid off how the great investors make money. In the Fall of 2012, when I was laid off, the stock market was about to go on a tear, and many of the stocks my financial advisor recommended went on to have %400 gains in the next few years. Throughout the stock market history for the non-wealthy, the time when you are in financial despair is the time to make a big bet with money you cannot afford to risk. Politicians dither about forcing to get people into 401ks, but that is not the point; only those with constant employment and are never laid off will ever make the kind of money needed to retire using the stock market. The Faustian bargain since Reagan was you have to go all in with stocks, which fits nicely with the Republican view that corporations really are people and Social Security provides no security and costs too much. (For them the chance for wealth means it is more important to risk all than to survive.) It’s hard to criticize a Duke Energy when their dividends are paying your bills. More on that in The South in Transition.