I just want to start this post by assuring any readers, that the last week at the office was as disorganized, chaotic, and dysfunctional as was possible. The icing on that fruitcake was the arrival of the movers who were refused by building management to move a single item. With one day left before the doors were locked, and it now being after the close of day on the next to last day, it was revealed that all of the emails requesting insurance affidavits from the movers had gone ignored by the puppet masters, and it was (again), left to the puppet to save the performance. Another blinding dance with use of common sense and the faintest hint of intellect to weave together the needs of murderers, and those who would be hired to murder us. My team and I, ushered into our final moments of normalcy, and asked to facilitate our own deaths; because as was so redundantly and succinctly conveyed, "this has not been handled ideally, and obviously there were opportunities to have done things in a different way, and I think there were some unfortunate breakdowns...". Please sever yourself and your team from your homes of eighteen years and clean up our mess; see yourself out; and don't you dare, fucking complain.
With that said... the story isn't exactly over. As it is, I am not "technically violating" the terms of my severance, because as of yet, I am not collecting my severance. Regardless, my captor has not been named.
On our final week, among scarred, faded and barren walls, I alone kept a normal schedule, allowing the others to arrive late and leave early if so desired. Our daily routines had already been adopted elsewhere, so our days were filled with collecting, packing, dismantling, pantomiming and emptying. With printers powered off, I was struck with the heaviness of a silence I hadn't heard in nearly two decades. It reinforced the sick feeling in my stomach, and it eliminated the hiding places for my thoughts. In those final days, I couldn't help but to revisit my life immediately pre-'this place', where I spent months trying to find a job after losing the previous one. The emasculating failure of my self; a moment in my past that broke me quite sufficiently. A wound significant enough to leave scars that my thoughts were again retracing. Now with the added weight of providing for more than just myself, and the financial expectations that living a family life brings, I felt that sickening darkness creeping about; barely masked by the few remnants of furniture our space held.
Somewhere between my tenth or eleventh YouTube video of the day, I decided to check my email... there were no shortage of people that hadn't been informed of our impending demise and they had questions I couldn't answer about a job I was no longer a party to. Among the mob of unwitting participants in ensuring I thought about my circumstance; was an email that required several readings. At first glance, it seemed to be misdirected, so I took a deep breath and polished off my investigative intuition and went about dissecting the evidence. It was sent by my boss directly to me; the greeting was personalized to me; it was filled with vague summations from which one could formulate erroneous conclusions (and will); and a response was needed immediately. This passed the smell test for legitimacy in how my boss operates: Forward along a convoluted, hastily written, unquestioned, collection of nonsense and ask me to make life-changing decisions immediately. This email seemingly offered a life line of four months; extending our puppet careers until the end of the year. Again, the details were vague, all I was given was a job description and the aforementioned timeline.
I took it upon myself; doing otherwise would have been pointless; to reach out to the origin of this email and glean more information. Through that discussion, I approached my team about this opportunity and determined interest. Originally, it was more than half of us on this enticing hook. They had a whole host of questions I hadn't even pondered, so I dug further and further until I found a person with the answers we needed. She provided the details we needed, and worked quickly to get answers I knew my boss wouldn't even try to find. It felt like a bomb had been dropped into the quiet slumber of our slow deaths...suddenly my thoughts were racing with whether or not I should cut or save that final tether to "this company". What do they say, "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"? How would I feel about this opportunity when the money from my severance dried up some time in November, and I could have still been working for another month? The churning abyss in my gut answered the question. The restrictions of this opportunity resulted in everyone but myself folding their hands.
Today, a month and a week after we all said goodbye to one another, this new role finally kicked in to overdrive. It's real now. For weeks, it's been a battle to have enough work to fill a day. Stuck at my desk for hours; barely literate in a language and software alien to me; fumbling my way through what I can decipher and resolve. I have a new boss, a new team, a new office, and income through Christmas. I made the adult decision... whatever happens. My biggest fear was that I would fail at this and get myself fired and lose my severance; I mean, I am still terrified of that, but it seems much less likely. My new teammates are friendly and welcoming; they've also been gracious with their time and knowledge. After so many years of being on the other side of the business, I discover that the company I imagined I was a part of and gave maybe one fuck about me, was on the other side of the wall. These are the people in which the company's values were first witnessed and engraved into our culture.
There's quite a bit of further "hilarity" I will share in coming posts. But here I am, still a puppet indebted to the same creators; but after 18 years, I have new handlers, and a new production to learn. My final tether; propping up my fractured ego; my bruised limbs; holding me in a dimming spotlight until the curtain falls one final time. I have no illusions that December will bring the end; there will be no more life lines. Even though we all look forward to putting 2020 well behind us, I am fully aware that 2021 will not arrive bearing relief; it's likely to hold as much death and despair as this year, but maybe we'll have a new president and senate; maybe we will have an end to the pandemic instead of it frightening arrival; and maybe I will find another job before I have burned through my severance.
Until the next... sleep well.
Listening to: Christian Death - "She Never Woke Up"
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