Well, it hasn’t all been classic French movies and pickling onions and bike rides and debilitating mood swings since my job went away. I have been productive and one result of that is The Let Go Diary, a day-by-day account of how my 33-year stint at Macmillan Learning came to an end, from the moment I was told my role had been eliminated (if you say so) until I walked out of the office for the last time.
I’m going to post excerpts from the Diary here — nothing that gives the game away, just the Prologue and then some bits and pieces. I’ll figure out what to do with the whole thing at some point.
Prologue
Father’s Day 2024 came two days after my last day at the company where I’d worked for over 33 years. I didn’t retire, didn’t leave for another position. I was let go, one of 40 told a few days before Memorial Day that their roles had been eliminated. It was the second time that year that a group of 40 got the same message. Like contractions, these rounds were happening closer together.
My Father’s Day present from my wife and son was a year’s subscription to MasterClass, the online learning platform that offers video tutorials from experts in a variety of fields. I chose as my first teacher, the magazine writer David Sedaris, and it was the final push I needed to start this project. I had already decided I was going to write about the experience of being let go and my last weeks at work. But I wouldn’t have been as clear-headed in how I wanted to go about it without David’s lessons, nor as open to letting the project take me in some unanticipated directions. He’s David to me now.
Here’s who I was. I was once called irreplaceable by a former CEO. It turned out to not be true for him as well. I’ve been told multiple times that I was a steadying presence through dramatic changes in structure (acquisitions, reorganizations, new departments, numerous layoffs), technology (from mechanical boards to disks to uploads), and communication (from faxes to emails to social media) only for decision makers to be skeptical of my ability to adapt to an AI-influenced world (My remark that this wasn’t my first technological paradigm shift did not reassure them). I was described as being a part of the very fabric of the company and the rock of my department – in farewell messages on a digital goodbye card I got a couple of days before it was over for good, that “rock” comment coming from the manager who made the decision to include me on the list of people being let go. I’m sure all of those compliments were sincerely meant.
With that kind of lead-in, I suppose some would think that what follows is going to be a righteous critique of my former employer in particular and the corporate world in general, a big tiresome “How could they?” expressed on behalf of myself and by extension other vulnerable veteran staffers whose years of experience can suddenly turn from being an asset to a liability.
Yeah, that’s what I thought too.