I hesitated to submit this to r/antiwork, because I don't agree with the culture of victimhood and the idea that we shouldn't have to work. I would like to think most people on this sub are like me, tired of working for subpar companies in subpar positions, but willing to work. I would have posted to R/Jobs, but this story is mostly for venting and seemed inappropriate for that sub. I need to get this story off my chest, in the hopes that I'll be able to move on.
I left a company of THREE, (four, if you count the CEO who also owned our partner company, which I don’t).
I was the only designer there for nearly two years after our president left to do his own thing (he couldn’t stand the VP). After dealing with the soul-draining dysfunction for long enough, I left.
The company is still there. I log onto the cloud server from time to time to download portfolio pieces and see what they’re working on. They seem to mostly be doing the creatively dead vanilla projects that helped push me to leave.
During those two excruciating years, my job hunt was not going well, so when I received two offers in one week out of the blue, both from former employers, I jumped at the chance (because any-job-oh-God-please-anything was better than that dead-end job). I took the offer that paid better and was fully remote.
As I said before, I had worked there before, right out of college (well, nine months out; my field is a shitshow to get into). I was actually a temp designer and stayed there for ten months before the company downsized me and another designer, among others. I vowed to never go back.
Fast forward nine years, and desperate to get out of my current job I accepted the offer, despite knowing the risk of being laid off. On paper, their offer was better, and I was a little hesitant to return to the other company. I left that one voluntarily and, as with relationships, once you leave you can't go back.
The company (whose offer I accepted) has a history of layoffs, besides the one I went through. One of the deciding factors for me was my (new) boss. He had been the design director nine years prior, and in my experience was the best leader I had ever worked under. We became friends over the intervening years, disc golfing and going for beers, and he would tell me he was devastated to have to lay me off. He was now the regional manager.
I cruised through the next few months. Some days I would take a midafternoon nap before returning to finish the day. It was easy; I had nearly ten years of experience by then, and sometimes it was slow. I got great reviews from my coworkers who I got on with.
Four months in it happened, they lay me off, along with a designer with 15 years of tenure. No severance whatsoever. The layoff happened over Zoom with my boss, his boss, and HR. I knew whatever they wanted was bad as soon as I saw HR was going to be on the call. The intense anger I have toward that company and my former boss still hits me sometimes.
I haven’t spoken to my twice former boss since. When he came by my house to pick up my equipment, I said, “You should have warned me this was coming.”
He replied, “It happened so fast. All indicators showed we were going in the right direction. I didn't know.”
“Well, you should have”, is all I could say.
I knew what he just said was only partially true. Two days before getting the boot, he had the entire design team back up all of our design files to the remote server, for “reasons”. The week before he had spent a few days in SLC, at company HQ, so I estimate he had between 2-5 days heads up before layoffs initiated. Even two days' heads up would have been preferred to being treated as entirely disposable.
I don’t think I said anything more, despite having much more I wanted to say to him. He made a fool out of me, convincing me to go back to a company I knew to be untrustworthy. I wordlessly refused to shake his hand and went back inside. Maybe that was an immature act, but he lost my respect for choosing to be a “company man”, over friendship.
I'm not claiming victimhood here, to be clear. Life just sucks sometimes. We take our licks then pick ourselves up again. It's been six months now without a job. For some archaic reason I couldn't fathom, unemployment rejected my claim because I voluntarily quit the previous job, and the amount of time worked at that job canceled out the benefits I would have been owed from the new job. I probably should have appealed, but it took nearly four months just to be told that much, and I was tired of meaningless job applications just to meet the unemployment requirements.
Since December I've registered an LLC, made a website, sold and built a puzzle table, and completed one small design contract. After building that table, which took around three weeks full-time, I stopped working altogether, as my wife and I decided to move to a cheaper state to live near family.
I decided it's an opportune time to make the move, as we have very little keeping us here anymore. I don't want to give the impression that moving is an act of “giving up.” My wife has wanted to live near family for some time, and I eventually came around as well. My sister and niece could use our support after the divorce they went through.
Getting the house ready to sell became my full-time job, and after two months we made it happen. We are now under contract on our house, as well as one in our new state. We like the house we found and are excited to be in it. Once there, I'm going to kick back into work mode and market the hell out of my freelance business. I'll also build a couple of new tables I've designed and see how well those sell. On the weekends, I'm going to start guiding for an outdoor adventure company.
I still have plenty of apprehension about where my income will come from for the foreseeable future, but I remind myself every day “There is a way forward, you just haven't found it yet.”