How it felt to lose my job

At the end of 2002, the collapse of Ansett promted me to write a reflection on my own experience of being retrenched, exactly a year before. Once again, job loses are dominating the news. Here is my take, wiritten nine years ago, on how it feels:

Is it my imagination, or do more people lose their jobs in December than at any other time? Last year, it was my turn. Four days before last Christmas, I was laid off. Rocked up to work on a Friday morning, looking forward to holidays, feeling festive. Was called into the group manager’s office and told not to come back after the break. Reading about Ansett’s demise this week brought it all back.

I got on fine with the bloke who had to tell me, and he probably felt as wretched as I did. He did the deed as gently as he could, but there’s no nice way to tell someone they’re fired. And in actual fact, I wasn’t exactly fired. There was a new CEO, there was a major restructure, I was a casual. It happens.

It took me a while to absorb what he was saying. Even when it had sunk in, I was in a state of shock more than anything else. I went back to my desk, and actually kept working on what I’d been doing when I was called to his office, kept finishing off an article I was writing, till I realised I didn’t have to finish anything off any more.

I had no idea what to do. I went back and asked if I should clear my desk of all my personal belongings, as if instructions to do that would mean that he was really serious. He said yes.

I went back to my desk and e-mailed one of the colleagues I was closest to. He sat in the desk opposite, but I didn’t trust myself to speak. I just wrote ‘Emergency. I need a coffee off the premises.’ He’d guessed. One of the awful things was that everyone had guessed, because I’d been called in and the office door had been shut and, at the risk of overstating things, the atmosphere reminded me of when I was a nurse and someone on the ward had just died.

My work mate took me out for latte and sympathy, unperturbed by my sodden face on the other side of the table. I went back to the office and started taking down the photos of my kids and the cartoons I’d stuck up. I rang my husband whose loving voice completely undid me and I started to cry in earnest. I lowered my head behind the partition of my workstation, not wanting to embarrass anyone.

All afternoon, as I packed my working life into cardboard boxes, my colleagues kept coming quietly up to my desk and expressing their regret. Their warmth and affirmation and sadness carried me through the day. I walked home in a daze, my arms full of flowers that they had rushed out and bought, and felt almost high on their support, the way you do after a really good funeral.

Next day reality hit home. It was hard to get enthused about Christmas. I cried on and off for three days. I was surprised at how discarded I felt. I had fought my way back into the workforce after many years at home with children, retraining as a mature-age student, fitting classes and assessment in between babies’ sleeps and picking older kids up from school.

Employment had meant a lot to me. I had felt fantastic about holding down a job, contributing to the family coffers after so many years of hard, worthwhile, but unpaid work. I loved the routine of getting to work, checking my e-mails, making the coffee, saying g'day to my mates, hitting my stride for the day. I even felt chuffed that I earned enough to have to pay tax.

Now, I was devastated. I made light of my feelings, saying to myself and others that I was lucky, hey, I’d only been a casual, my husband has a job, I have lots of other things in my life, something else will turn up. I thought of people much worse off than I was. But still I felt gutted.

We had paid for the family Christmas presents, we had paid for a long awaited holiday in Tasmania. I knew this would be exactly what the doctor ordered, but felt as flat as a tack. Holidays don’t have the same allure when there’s no job to come back to.

Something changes when you get the sack. I’m very cagey, now, about getting too comfortable in a job. Even more than before, I feel pathetically grateful to anyone who will employ me. And someone has. Something did turn up. I have been lucky, and have scored some work. It’s only temporary, but the boost that even temporary work gives you is not to be underestimated. And there’s always the possibility that it may lead on to something else.

But I’m still edgy and nervous, and a bit less confident about life progressing in an even line, from strength to strength. And there must be many people out there feeling like that right now.

Comments

[Pam]

Gut wrenching, Clare, to lose a job. Any loss changes us profoundly. But loss is part of life and we need to accept the sadness that loss brings.
Bright new fields can open up - and then remembering the past becomes a little bit less fraught, a little bit more bearable. Slowly.

[Amy]

I am currently 'between jobs' and it is comforting to know that you have experienced - and survived - the bewilderment, frustration and heartache I now feel. It takes courage to keep looking, to keep going... but it is less lonely knowing you've walked this path, too. Thanks.