On Monday, my work husband called to see if I had a meeting with our boss. We both had meetings scheduled, but the way they were laid out led us to believe he was being laid off and I was not. I baked him four dozen of his favorite cookies (molasses) and brought them to work. As we thought, he was out of a job by Tuesday. Much of his work will fall to me, but more than that, we'll lose his energy. His main purpose over the last two years has been to keep pushing us forward and to refuse the status quo. I don't mean this in my usual lefty radical sort of way; I mean that he pretends not to understand explanations when they sound like excuses, and he's good at motivating a team even if he's not actually leading it.
We had lunch on Tuesday and I felt a very strange feeling of loss. We talked again Wednesday, planned to meet Thursday but then cancelled that when various other things came up. Since we've both been working from home for the last year, it felt very much the same as usual. Except with a cloud over my head. It feels as though my best friend is moving away.* B, my now-ex coworker, has been laid off nine times in his 30 years since graduating college. Nine times. He's used to the drill, but I've never been in a company that had layoffs before. He knows what to do, who to call, what to talk about, what forms he needs. I asked him how our boss and HR director seemed when they were meeting with him, and he said they seemed sad and a little nervous. Our boss was so shaken up (though B was the first of four layoffs, which is about 10% of our staff) that B felt like he might need to support our boss. At the end of the day, those of us who remained had a meeting with the executive director (who is my boss) and the HR director, who let us know that yes there were layoffs (not everyone was aware), but they're done for now. They had made changes in benefits last year (bringing us from really good benefits down to average for our industry) to avoid layoffs, but not this year. They could do any more.
On Wednesday I emailed our HR director and my boss to tell them that I appreciated how they dealt with it all. I felt an equal balance of compassion and professionalism, and they look more like they'd lost a finger than dropped dead weight. This is the nonprofit I've worked for since I graduated college four years ago. They hired me to run a program, trained me to write grants, then gave me a promotion. They've invested in me, even when I've had run-ins with coworkers and supervisors (and when I had a staff, with them too). Every time I think about leaving, I remember that it does feel like a family (and that my retirement account isn't fully vested for another year and some).
When my best work friend (and former boss) left two years ago, it was at the same time that I was being promoted out of her department. She moved across the country, but my job was so different, it felt like a friend moved, not like my work environment had changed. At the same time, we hired B, so I had a whole new nuclear family. I feel like I'm on my own again...and I feel like my whole organization is back where we were two years ago. We're back to survival instead of growth...or at least that's how it looks from my perspective. I had trouble sleeping all week. Which is to say, I either had insomnia or struggled to stay awake until I went to bed at 11 p.m., several hours early for me. I couldn't focus, I could barely finish specific tasks. I felt lost...like I wasn't quite sure what my job was anymore.
I had been planning to take Friday off for a belated anniversary celebration of kayaking on the Broad River, and I went ahead with those plans. I feel guilty for surviving the layoffs, especially because someone so close to me did not. It took me the first full hour, maybe two, to stop thinking about work. About three hours in, a thunderstorm hit, and we kept on kayaking through the rocks (that I called sea monsters) and their semi-choppy water (that I called slow-pids). Half an hour later, some fellow kayakers convinced us to get out of the water for fear of lightning, and we spent half an hour feeling dirty, cold, and awkward. We got back in and were done about an hour and a half later.
It felt badass to be on the river, in a kayak, in a storm, with the thunder and the rain. I felt strong. When we first saw that clouds were rolling in, I was annoyed and a bit anxious. E asked if I wanted to pull off onto an island until it passed, but I didn't. So we just kept going. I realized after a while that since I was already wet and in a river, the rain wasn't such a nuisance. What was it going to do? It wasn't windy, the water wasn't choppier, the river wasn't rising much (and it was so low to begin with anyway). It was just that the water was coming from above instead of just the sides and below. I'm sure that's a metaphor for life, but after the week I'd had, it just felt good to be doing something. I knew I wasn't in control of it, but I had a pretty firm grasp on the paddle.
*This is compounded by the fact that my best friend actually is moving 1,500 miles away in a few weeks.
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