Sitting there in the
boardroom with others whom you have worked with for over a year, and you have watched some of them in the past walking to the
elevators to take their
smoke breaks, and you let them go with a faded smile on your lips, fondly
remembering the times when you used to go on smoke breaks, before
you quit.
Well you didn't quit exactly. You consider yourself an
ex-smoker and you always will. You didn't quit because of the
cancer scares or the
pregnancy complications or the other
scare tactics. You didn't quit because you stopped liking
them all the sudden. You quit because the
taxes were
outrageous and you got tired of being treated like a
second-rate citizen for having a
hobby. You couldn't financially afford the expense any longer.
You did the math. At a pack to a pack and a half a day, you were at roughly three dollars a day when you quit. Twenty-one dollars a week. Eighty-four dollars a month. One thousand and eight dollars a year. Expensive habit.
So you quit, but you have
envied those who still do. Now you sit there in the boardroom with others whom you have worked with for a year, and your boss is telling you that "they had to let us go." Not just you. Not just a few people. Not just a department. Everybody. Even your boss. Even the woman who is her boss. The whole floor. Well, except for the sales department that's been slowly growing larger the past few months while your department's been getting smaller. You should have known. We should have seen it coming.
I mean, didn't they bring you on kinda late? Didn't you hear
rumors when you first started that they were gonna shut this place down? But they didn't. Somehow that axe passed by and no one lost a hair, and you found yourself a sort of
metaphorical
olive branch brought in on a wing by some invisible
dove.
"Well they hired that guy, didn't they?" you'd overhear near the
water cooler.
"They wouldn't shut us down if they just hired that guy." But that was over a year ago, which is ages in this business.
It makes no sense though. You are the product. You and those you have worked with for over a year now. You are the service. That's now moving
out of state. Maybe out of country. The sales department though, that's staying here. In fact, that's getting bigger. You don't understand it. Here, at the bottom of the ladder, it doesn't make sense. Up there at the top, in their lofty corner office, their
room with a view, it makes perfect sense. The change will be
transparent to the customer, or so they hope.
The
Christmas season is coming. You find yourself sitting there in the boardroom with others whom you have worked with for over a year, and you find yourself
unemployed. There will be
formalities. There's paperwork to sign that of course you don't understand and care not to. No one talks about suing because if you sue you don't get your
severence. And why sue? They'll pay you until the end of the year and you think that's nice. That's kind of them. You've been places where they just gave you a box and escorted you and your things to the parking lot. So it could have been worse. Still, that doesn't change the fact that you're looking into the new year with few
prospects and less
anticipation.
And your friends, whom you have worked with for over a year, get up from their seats and the first thing they talk about after the meeting?
"Wanna go smoke?" and they talk with one another at first. Then one of them looks at you. You quit smoking a year ago last April 13th. That's over a year ago. About the same time you got this job that ain't there no more. And this is nobody's fault, but it is frustrating.
Shit happens. One of them looks at you, holds up a cigarette to offer you, and asks quite sincerely,
"you comin'?"
Maybe it's not a time when you MUST have a smoke, but it's a time when you should.