I’m going to try to keep this short.
I’m 31 and I occupy a middle management position at a small law firm. I’m paid pretty well (as in it’s going to be really hard to find a job which pays me this much without me having to work much harder for the money).
Anyway, I’ve mostly done what I’ve needed to do. Never had an unhappy client or missed deadline, always volunteered to help when I didn’t need to, got down in the trenches with my team, etc. But I always slacked on my admin. I have a very lazy attitude to management, in a sense that I only care about things that matter and I had no plans to leave so I figured that I would always be there to catch any dropped balls (mostly by my juniors). I wanted them to focus on substantive stuff, not admin, and it’s a journey and they’d learn to get organised along the way.
Fast forward and they decided to let me go, let most of my team go, and take over what work we had. It’s a longer story but they screwed us totally. They let us go at a time when it’s near impossible to find work because that’s year end where I am. They did not give us any warning, blamed financial losses that they could and should’ve seen months ago, and they let one of the seniors go totally unchecked for years. I have already said to them that it blows my mind that they didn’t see the financial issues when I pointed things out months ago.
Then they offered to keep me on on like an ad hoc basis, never finalised the deal, and didn’t even tell me it wasn’t happening. I’m still not 100% but they made an announcement to the rest of the firm about my new role and we hadn’t finalised anything.
I found out in the third week of September and have been trying to organise the handover admin. But I kept getting shot down. My last day is next Tuesday and they’ve all come to life suddenly and are placing pressure on all of us.
I don’t actually know how to deal. On one hand, I feel like I should’ve done more, especially because i knew i was on my way out. Plus. Historically. I should’ve done better or could have done better. On the other hand, I’m like “they’ve screwed us all over, they’re laying me off, they’re reneging on their word without even communicating with me, why should I care?”
I guess I’m just conflicted. And a bit overwhelmed.
Posting from my dedicated throwaway.