The last word: I’m fired

The exodus began with the word “Bob.”

“Bob, can I see you for a minute?” the boss had asked.

Within minutes, Bob was exiting the office with a wave and a “Nice working with everybody.”

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What the … ?

Instinctively, several employees followed Bob out to the parking lot.

“They told me not to say anything, but I’m not going to work with people for 13 years and not wave goodbye,” Bob said as co-workers surrounded him. Bearded, disheveled, and wearing shirts that should have been retired in 1984, Bob is one of those beloved characters. More of a “why not me?” than a “why me?” guy, he graciously accepted his fate along with some very erotic parking-lot-in-broad-daylight hugs. But before I could blurt out, “Bob, you are one high-grade SOB,” the boss was yelling out the front door of our office complex. “You all need to get back inside,” he barked. “You shouldn’t even be talking to him.”

Shouldn’t be talking to Bob? What an absurd thought. That’s all we do most of the time.

And now, another co-worker, Jana, is in that tiny room, plucked straight out of the line as we filed back into the office. If they can dispose of Jana, who would have been last on everybody’s hit list, no one is safe.

An alarm spreads: They don’t let you come back to your desk. Now everyone prepares for the worst. It’s all going—family photos, Thai takeout menus, SpongeBob action figures … We are frantically sweeping the contents of our desks into boxes and shopping bags. “I was specifically told I had to be here today,” says a co-worker who usually works from home on Thursdays. “If I had to be here, it must be because … ”

Our small office in Florida, which is part of a multimedia corporation, has certainly not been impervious to layoffs. Positions have slowly been eliminated in our branch, but the usual MO involved the doomed employee getting a call at home to report to our main office, where one would be disposed of quietly.

But today is obviously a dimension beyond. Human Resources has come to us and set up shop in a tiny unoccupied office.

Managers don’t have time to be subtle anymore. They are not concerned that an employee will make a scene or set off the fire sprinklers on the way out the door. No, this time the cuts will be swift and multiple, consequences be damned.

“Oh, I know the company doesn’t really need me,” one employee mutters. “I don’t want to go into that tiny office.”

“You’re right,” I say. “Let’s disappear.” (Who wouldn’t want to disappear at a time like this?)

In seconds, we are all back in the parking lot, slapping a Post-it on Jana’s car— “Meet us at Rotelli’s”—and fleeing a quarter-mile down the street on foot so that when the boss comes back out, there will be no one here to fire.

By the time we make it to the front doors of the restaurant, Jana, who always carries herself regally, is getting out of her car, primly clutching the severance package to her chest as if it’s an award for valor, which, in her case, it may very well be.

The walking papers quickly become a coaster for a Diet Coke, and we laugh at the thought of the boss coming out to find everyone gone and marvel at Jana’s Mary Poppins attitude. We half expect her to break into song, but instead she breaks out a sheet from the packet that reveals the job description of every employee being fired today. “I only had a chance to look at it quickly,” she says, putting her finger on the list.

There’s Bob. There’s Jana. There’s … me.

No one else.

My cell phone rings. The boss. I ignore it, but I know this is a summons I can’t escape for long. Instantly, I am separated from those who fled here beside me. The people across the table are now simply workers on lunch break arguing over pizza toppings—mushroom or pepperoni?

I am a fugitive.

The company is beyond giving reasons for dismissing employees. Back at the office, as the HR woman shuffles my termination papers, I go through a checklist in my head, trying to decipher why I was chosen. Age? I’m only a little older than Prince and not nearly as old as Jerry Seinfeld. Performance? I can see my “Staffer of the Year” trophy from here. Money? That was the rumor—they whacked the three who made the most. But all things considered, I thought I came pretty cheap.

The HR woman leaves the room to make a copy. While she is gone, the boss stiffly sits as a witness in a chair against the wall, and my thoughts travel from the paperwork in front of me to wondering if, after 18 years with the company, I will get even a simple, “Thank you for your service.”

Finally, when I reach the foyer, I hear an urgent, “Hey, Terry!”

Okay, I get it. Here it comes. The boss was only waiting to get out of earshot of HR to show his true appreciation. Here it comes, here it comes ... “What’s your code?”

“What?”

“Your pass code to get into the building.”

“4700.”

And with the surrender of those four digits, I have sealed the door behind me and joined the ranks of the unemployed.

I’m a big believer in the idea that nothing happens until it happens to you. Lately, I’ve been cutting out notices of nationwide layoffs as if they’re obituaries. The numbers are startling—tens of thousands in the auto industry, up to 200,000 in commercial banking. ATA Airlines bankrupt and “virtually all the employees” told their jobs are gone.

And they all have families. I can feel their pain, the nighttime sweats that come with the threat of bankruptcy and the loss of health care. My wife, Chris, works for a small company with lousy benefits. My debt—too many ski trips—far outweighs my savings. My two children are grown, but my son is still in college and extremely needy, as in, “Dad, I need $168 for this macroeconomics book.” He’s about to get the economics lesson of his life. He’s oblivious.

The big company sets you free with enough severance to cover short-term debts, entree to a high-priced career planner, and mental-health counseling to ward off “the blues,” but where does it end? How do you reinvent yourself when jobs are few, competition is fierce, and image is everything?

Upon hearing the news of my termination, Laura, the office manager, told me quite simply, “I’m worried. Jana is beautiful and younger, and Bob is Bob, but you, you I worry about. You need someplace to go.”

I go to the unemployment website.

Signing up for unemployment benefits puts it all into perspective: I’m screwed. My particular brand of expertise is evaporating more quickly than boiling hot dog water.

I was planning to turn the first few days of this mess into a mini-vacation, spurred on by Jana’s report on her first official day of unemployment: “I slept till 10:30 and watched two hours of Will & Grace on Lifetime. Ate Doritos for lunch!”

Trying to relax, I sit outside on the porch, reading Blender magazine.

But it doesn’t take.

Eat some blueberry pancakes.

Doesn’t take.

Put Mermaid Avenue on the iPod.

Doesn’t take.

One second, I’m elated about going on to other things in life, and the next I want to puke. I can’t seem to get into that vacation mode, and that’s when I decide to fill out the unemployment forms online. I’m shocked by the math: Even the maximum allotment is barely milk money. And the thought of having to report where I applied for a job “each week” does nothing to ease my nausea.

People have already started asking me: “So, what are you going to do? How are you going to make money?”

Truth is, if money weren’t a major issue, I’d be content to just work in a store, stocking shelves. Doesn’t everyone grasp the appeal of a job you leave behind at the end of the shift, a job that takes your attention but not your soul?

The one saving grace of the unemployment form is that at the very end you have to pick the occupation that most resembles yours from a list. It is in alphabetical order, so the first one is “Able Seaman.”

Mulling over the position really gives me an enchanting sense of possibility. I log on to other job sites. Instantly, I can see the future: I’m Alexander Supertramp driving a grain machine in Oregon or, more realistically, since I am—uh, used to be—a journalist, I’m pocketing $7,300 a year writing for Yellowstone publications, whose offices are just outside the north side of the park.

What are you going to do?

Suddenly, the thrill of considering job possibilities is not so thrilling.

Eat Doritos for dinner.

Doesn’t take.

A job fair at a nearby convention center gives me temporary hope because the railroad company is hiring. I’m well aware that plenty of occupations are totally out of my realm, but with proper training, why couldn’t I be a conductor for the local commuter train?

“I could see you being a railroad conductor,” says Chris, staying positive. “Punching those tickets.”

“No, no, I mean the guy steering the train and hanging his arm out the front window.”

“You mean the engineer—the guy at the helm.”

“Yes, at the helm,” I insist. “That’s me.”

I arrive early because the fair starts with a seminar titled “Working the Room.” Susan, the host of the motivational talk, charges into the room.

“Who here is absolutely fabulous?” she shouts.

No hands rise. She’s lost us already. I know I’m talented, and that I’m a nice guy and a hard worker, but I’m not feeling fabulous.

“Have you looked at your shoes?” Susan asks the group. “People do judge us by how we’re dressed.” She also urges us to carry a “classy pen” in hand, not an “unemployed pen.”

The job fair is set up like your typical convention, with rows of employer tables and draped interview booths. Applicants snicker when they pass the Dollar General booth, but I wonder how many days away each of us is from regretting that laughter. I have a one-track mind: Where is the railroad line’s booth?

Unlike Dollar General, the train booth has a bit of a backup, and while waiting I notice that the company is trying to fill mostly administrative positions. No mention of engineers.

A dark-haired gentleman with taxidermy eyes turns his attention toward me for a second, and I quickly ask how to apply for driving one of the trains.

“Driving?” he repeats.

“You know, at the helm.”

He looks me up and down, lingering a little too long on my shoes, and then says, “No.”

I wait for a “but” or a curt explanation, but nothing. Just, “No.”

That pretty much sums things up.

From a longer article that appeared in The Washington Post Magazine. ©2008 by T.M. Shine. Used with permission.