On Dec 19th 2014, six days before Christmas, I was fired from a company after 8 years of work. Let that sink in for a moment. Six days before what is to be one of the biggest holiday periods here in the US, I was let go from a company I had decided to devote my life to.
I had left site to go to home office around 3pm to beat the traffic. I had my work done and told my contract supervisor where I would be. Little did I know what was in store for me. Now before you say you had to know it was coming I really did not. I had hard clients before and never ever worried about being fired.
I was a raising star in my company. I had taken hard assignments around the world in "unsafe" places. I had taken the degree path they wanted to be a fast track star. I was always top of my division for reviews and maxed out always on my raises. In one year alone I was given raises totaling more than 30K. For a guy in his 30's and making over 140K a year you begin to think what else can I do to make life any better?
When I walked into my Program Managers office I was expecting to hear that I was going to be moved to a new location and that my transfer that I had put in for was happening. My PM said "please have a seat, I have J here, J, I have HR on the phone, please read this letter and when you are done I need to you to sign at the bottom. That letter was the them letting me go. No one said a word till I looked up when I was finished, and then the only real thing they had to say was your insurance for you and your wife will terminate at midnight tonight!
Thinking about it now, it was the hardest one page letter I have ever read. It hit me like someone hitting you in the back of the head with a bat. My hands began to tremble, I lost my breath and began to feel weak and dizzy, the room started to spin. My heart raced, palms began to sweat, my mouth became a desert and it became hard to hear let alone talk. This was a company I had given eight years to and had resigned myself to being "a company man".
The letter stated very clearly that I was in an "at will" state and that at any time I could be let go for no cause, warning or notice and that's exactly what they did. Now looking back I am pretty sure I was let go for holding to my ethics and the laws of Michigan and DoD, for not forging an audit and telling the client that I could not willingly or lawfully sign the document in front of his superiors and embarrassing him in the process, the week before I was let go.
But there I was trying to get my bearings and figure out what had just happened. More importantly I had to call my wife of three months that had just immigrated to the US and explain to her and then my family that I was terminated and still keep my composure. I was going through the seven stages of grief. Because that's what it was. Grief!
The seven staged of grief if you don't know are:
- Shock & Denial
- Pain & Guilt
- Anger & Bargaining
- Depression/Reflection/Loneliness
- The Upward Turn
- Reconstruction & Working through
- Acceptance & Hope
source, http://www.recover-from-grief.com/7-stages-of-grief.html
The first night is the hardest in my opinion. I felt as if I was in free fall underwater and falling deeper into the abyss every second with out a breath of water and no way to get that next breath. I could not sleep, but I would dose in and out. I woke up, what seemed like, a dozen times through that first night. Nightmares came fast and furious and they were dark to say the least. With my wife laying next to me that first night I felt half a world away form her and less of a man for bringing her here and then losing my job.
My only saving grace was the 20K I had saved carefully over 5 years invested in loans from Lending club (www.lendingclub.com). I knew that I could liquidate my notes with in days if need be to stay afloat, pay bills and in my case finish my last class to get the degree that my now former company had asked me to get. Talk about being bitter over a degree. I felt it was just going to be a life long reminder now of all things I did not want. Thankfully that notion ended with in moments of signing up for the last class.
In the next post I will share with you how I made my way through it.