13
"A bolt of panic shot through my body as Tom continued shitting HR-speak from his mouth, repeating phrases like 'skill set' and 'moving forward' until I eventually tuned him out."
—The Way We Get Laid Off Now.
"you got caught up in this latest round of workforce reductions"
Images of a dastardly workforce reduction thresher, mowing down hapless employee after hapless employee, as middle management looks on fro the sidelines, weeping.
Okay, I really need him to write parts 2 and 3 because I can see this coming for me soon…I really hope the light at the end of the tunnel isn't a train.
Poor guy but "ruminated in my mind" and "brought me within inches of my sanity" within the space of a few paragraphs….
I had empathy until I read "Commuted 75 miles each day, five days a week".
Why no empathy after that?
Well, I do have an opinion about people with commutes like that but it sounds like getting fired was doing this guy a favor. He hated the job and bitched about the commute and I'm supposed to keep reading?
I can see that…I've never really understood the "tortured artist who had to conform" blues.
I looked at it more as a guy who was building a life, and coming to terms with an identity that he lost.
I had a commute like that for five years, and sometimes there are forces out of your control that drive the necessity. Maybe he was upside down on his house, maybe they needed to be close to his/her family. And sometimes, that is the only way to make the budget work.
Maybe that was where the work was. I don't have a subway on my corner, either.
I actually don't care to push my views on people's commute times and whether they could take a train and read books or choose to sit in a fume filled line of rage (or perhaps move closer!).
I just think if you are writing a post about being laid off you could leave the parts out about 'soul crushing' and shitty commute time or the reader might just have the perception I had, which is that you may have been done a favor. I had the same experience 5 years prior and there aren't many times I think, gee, I wish I still had that job. I could be falling asleep on the Eisenhower right now daydreaming about who was just trying to undermine me back at the office.
Having limited job choices is a separate thing.
Also, what are the odds parts 2 and 3 involve some variation of "I'm now doing what I love"? I'm going to guess VERY high.
You and I could talk about that drive. I play music when I do it and zone out. Comfortably numb, some would say–although that's not what I'm listening to.
When I lived in the city, btw, it took me LONGER to get to work.
I agree about the likely upshot of this series. Two more parts about a crushed soul gathering mold wouldn't have much appeal.
I moved back downtown after that job.
I do miss El Taco Grande (the owners were neighbors), the river and having an actual garden/yard. You could justify a commute to live in a nice town with good schools like that.
Not everyone has the luxury of doing a job they love that lets them post snarky comments on the web all day. In fact, I'd say 99% of people don't have that.