Originally published at Kickin’ the new Kuh-nowledge. You can comment here or there.

OK. So sometimes fairytales have not so good endings. Remember my last post where I said all was well and good in the world. Well… something happened on the way to happily everafter.

Yesterday morning I received a call from my boss. I’ve been laid off. He was nervous and sad. I was sad and beginning to cry. The weird thing was this. Since I’m remote and I had logged into the network already, I was able to actually talk to my friends around the company via IM and e-mail while my boss was talking to me.

It was kind of surreal. My boss was speaking to me from a script. At the same time I was typing to my colleagues… “I’ve been laid off.” It turned out that my little IMs were a godsend. I received so many supportive responses that within an hour of learning of my lay off, I was already feeling better and it allowed me to focus on the things I needed to do. It was comforting to know that all of those relationships I had built up over 12 years at USA Today actually meant something.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a little shellshocked about the whole thing. It’s hard to grok the concept that it doesn’t matter how good you are at what you do… the bean counters don’t care about that. They look at the numbers and make the cut. Are there still people working at the company that would make more sense to cut instead of me? Of course. That’s not the way lay offs work. It’s not about talent, it’s about accounting. Anyone that tries to feed you a line of bull about how “businesses are hurting and this is necessary so that the company is on a firm footing for the future” needs to pay better attention. If a business was really interested in having a firm footing for the future, they would trim the folks that aren’t producing… not just the ones that make incrementally more than the next guy (not that I even make that much money to begin with).

That said… maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m the slacker that doesn’t produce. Who knows. It’s hard to judge that from where I’m sitting. I like to think that I produce good to great results with the things I did at USA Today… but it’s hard to be objective about yourself. LOL

Well, I’m not saying that this is the end of the fairytale, but damn if it isn’t that stretch of the story where you’re not quite sure if the hero is going to make it. This turn of events came as a complete and total surprise.

I sent out my first resume today for a help desk job at the University. I’ll be sending a lot more resumes out soon. Some final proofreading and layout, and I’ll be back on track with the job search. If I can’t find anything within the next 3 months, I’ll start doing desperation moves like widening the search to all 50 states.

–sam

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