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Antiwork

I have developed short-timer’s syndrome

I've been at my workplace for 27 years. In that time, I was on committees, worked tons of unpaid OT, did all the team building things, worked nights, weekends, and holidays when needed. Twice I was honored with performance awards (employee of the year). I'm good at my job. Very good. However, in 21 days, I will be unemployed. I work in a grant funded position, but the grant was reallocated, which is going to put me out of a job. I'm getting laid off. I found this out about a month ago, and have continued to do my work while also wrapping up and starting to document what I can for whoever will pick up the tasks of my role once I'm gone. HR met with me last week to walk me through next steps, benefits considerations, filing for unemployment, etc. In that meeting, I found out that although…


I've been at my workplace for 27 years. In that time, I was on committees, worked tons of unpaid OT, did all the team building things, worked nights, weekends, and holidays when needed. Twice I was honored with performance awards (employee of the year). I'm good at my job. Very good. However, in 21 days, I will be unemployed. I work in a grant funded position, but the grant was reallocated, which is going to put me out of a job. I'm getting laid off. I found this out about a month ago, and have continued to do my work while also wrapping up and starting to document what I can for whoever will pick up the tasks of my role once I'm gone.

HR met with me last week to walk me through next steps, benefits considerations, filing for unemployment, etc. In that meeting, I found out that although my five weeks of accrued vacation time will be paid out, the $35,000 in sick/other PTO time will not. I'm just supposed to accept that it will be gone. In addition, it occurred to me that despite my outstanding work record and overall performance, nobody at the organization seems interested in finding a different role for me so I can stay. That hurts, but since I've been there so long, I'm expensive, and I understand that.

Anyway, my good attitude has dissipated since the meeting with HR. Although I want to continue to be professional and all that, I have lost all interest in continuing to do my job. This week, I worked maybe four hours and spent the rest of my time doing anything but my job. I should mention that nobody else knows the details of what I do or how I do it, and most of it isn't documented anywhere except for in my head. At this point, I feel like, eh, whatever, they can figure it out themselves when I'm gone. IDGAF. I want to feel bad about my attitude, but I can't work up the enthusiasm. I gave it my all for a long time, but in the end, it didn't help me. I'm 62. Nobody is going to hire me. Everything feels futile. No, I'm not in a position to retire–not even close.

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