Being Laid Off: The Ultimate Car Crash

Getting laid off feels like a car crash. One second, you’re driving along, blasting some tunes and enjoying a nice voyage to your destination. The next? You’re helpless as you’ve been T-boned making a left turn, your car sputtering while the traffic—the world—stops around you.

You’re helpless. You’re hopeless. You instantly think about the impending days. Here’s hoping you walk out of it unharmed, but it’s not over there; police reports, auto repair, potential lingering injuries and fighting for days on end with insurance to get your proper compensation fills your already busy schedule. And if your car is totaled? That’s a whole other ballgame.

In one second, your entire day, week, month, year, or in extreme cases, your life trajectory, changes. 

One moment is all it takes. Much like an unplanned meeting with your department manager, HR representative or direct supervisor can do.

On Tuesday, August 19 at 10:03 am CDT, this was my life-altering moment. After working a position that I absolutely loved, with people I loved, for the better part of four years, I was informed that my position was being eliminated and I would no longer be working for the employer I planned to finish my career with. 

If you’ve never been laid off, I can’t begin to describe the rush of emotions you feel when the moment finally happens. Anger. Frustration. Sadness. Fear. Disappointment. Longing. Existential dread. A pulverizing gut punch that absolutely floors you. And yet, somehow anger and sadness again, all in the exact same moment.

You’d think with this being my third time being laid off, I’d be used to it. But you never can quite prepare yourself.

For those that know me, I am an extremely loyal person … and it’s to a fault. Even though I have felt the sting of layoffs before, if you provide me a safe space to voice my opinion, do excellent work, make friends and generally be myself, I’ll latch onto you forever. And, I’m sorry hockey teammates, that includes you. As bad as I play or as raunchy as my jokes get, you better be used to me. I ain’t going anywhere.

As much as I loved what I did and as much as I enjoyed the lifestyle I was able to build around my position, none of that hurts as much as one major factor (at least for me). It’s the people. The relationships. The conversations. The daily check-ins. The collaboration time. The friendship.

It’s that car you loved that is now totaled and in a salvage yard. Gone. Poof. In the blink of an eye.

But why?

That’s the question that comes to mind for anyone going through what I’m going through. What could I have done differently? What course could have been taken to avoid this? Why me?

It keeps me up at night. It surrounds my thoughts all day. But something more fleeting pops in my head as I race through every emotion, even more than two weeks later. 

Where is everybody? What happened to my work friends?

Those people I spoke with daily. The people I shared intimate details of my personal life with. Those people I texted late on a Saturday night when I was having a good time and they popped into my head. Why did they have to go too?

They didn’t. But they did anyway.

This isn’t a car crash. This isn’t that car you’ve waited for your whole life just to be taken away because of one other person’s mistake. These are deeply rooted friendships you took time to help grow. These are people who have been through the struggle with you and have picked you up when you needed it. And you reciprocated, because that’s what good co-workers do.

But that’s the entire point: co-workers, not friends. That’s the life lesson you have to reteach yourself every time you go through this. You tell yourself this time is different because you’re in the moment. You’re in the shit together. You find deeper connections with every meeting and every one-on-one conversation. There’s no way these people would turn their back on me, right?

I’ve been in the other car before. I’ve seen some excellent people get mowed down by poor business decisions or just simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Did I do the same thing? 

No. When you saw your good friends get laid off, you reached out, wrote letters of recommendation, emailed supporting messages to them. Texted randomly on a Tuesday night just to say hey. Recommended on LinkedIn without asking. 

“You’re the exception” is what I am told. I spoke with my therapist about this darker side of losing my job and she understood, but explained that people simply cannot be relied upon without you initiating the conversations.

“When people see their co-workers, even friends, get laid off, they internalize what happened and don’t want to talk about it. They only will if you initiate. They are so involved in what is going on in their busy lives that they don’t want to feel the burden of others unless they have to.”

Survivor’s guilt is a very, very real thing. I completely, wholeheartedly know that. I’ve been there. But for other people’s sake, you need to push past it. You need to realize there are others in the world that could use even just a random text.

“You’re the exception,” she says. “You’re the person witnessing the accident and actually stops, gets out of his car and makes sure everyone is ok. Everyone else who witnessed it is gone in a matter of moments.”

My wife and I had this conversation and her exact words: “It’s not reciprocated because you’re too nice.” I can’t argue with that point. My only response was, “But why is that? What does that say about us as a society?”

No one is asking anyone to drive to my house—risk an accident—and spend the day with me. I’m asking for a simple, tiny gesture that shows you care and you feel my absence in your life. Is that really asking too much?

That’s not to say I haven’t had my fair share of bystanders check in and ensure I’m ok. There are some excellent people I worked with that I was not as close to that have offered assistance in any way professionally, which says a lot about their exceptional character. If you’re reading this and you feel like you went to the limit of where our working relationship was, there’s an extremely good chance this post is not about you. 

But to those reading who may be feeling guilt at this point … well, you know who you are. And you’re too late.

I’ve already packed up everything in my trunk and I’m looking at new ways of transportation on my phone. No need to check on how I’m recovering from a car accident when I’m already back in the gym doing my normal routine. 

What’s the point of this post?

The first part of this is purely selfish. Writing my thoughts down is the best form of therapy for me. It has already helped me feel a massive weight lift off my shoulders.

But, that could be done without posting it anywhere. Trust me, I considered just leaving this private, but then I realized there could be a deeper meaning to my rambling.

It may seem like it, but this post is not meant to make those I was close to feel bad about themselves. For those people, this is a lesson for the future.

The point is that we cannot forget those that we have lost professionally. In our darkest times, everyone needs support, even if we seem like the strongest people around. Maybe that friendship still ends in a year or a decade, but when someone is in their darkest moments, you have an obligation as someone in their life to do something other than sit on your hands and feel guilty that you’re still employed. 

That person needs the encouragement to move forward. They need that one last favor as your co-worker. They need the light to conquer the darkness.

“Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.”

                                        - Maya Angelou