I knew birthdays.
Whose kid had asthma.
Whose mother was in assisted living.
Who needed Tuesdays remote because of childcare.
When layoffs came, people like me were usually asked to help deliver them.
That morning, I learned management titles do not protect you when headquarters decides an entire branch is unnecessary.
The vice president from corporate stood beside someone from HR.
They did not sit.
That was the second clue.
The Ridgehaven office was closing.
Not restructuring.
Closing.
Most functions would move to another state.
A few employees could apply for remote positions.
Everyone else would receive severance.
My role was eliminated.
So were sixty-two others.
There is something surreal about losing a job in a room where everybody else is losing theirs too.
No one knows who is allowed to cry.
Nobody knows whether to comfort the person beside them because you are equally terrified.
I spent the next several hours helping my employees.
Writing references.
Making introductions.
Giving people personal contact information.
One woman had worked for me for nine years.
She stared at the cardboard box in her arms and said:
“My husband just started chemo.”
I had no useful answer.
So I gave her the number of a recruiter I trusted and promised to call him myself.
By four-thirty, most desks were empty.
I sat in my office alone.
The company sign outside the glass wall still said Northcrest Solutions as if nothing had happened.
I looked at the photograph on my desk.
Marissa and me at the coast five years earlier.
Her hair blowing across her face.
Me laughing.
We had savings.
Six months of expenses, maybe more if we cut back.
My severance package was decent.
My résumé was strong.
Three competitors had already contacted me before I left the parking lot.
I was scared.
But I was not panicking.
I kept thinking:
Marissa will be worried.
Then we will make a plan.
That was what married people did.
At least, that was what I believed.
I stopped on the way home and bought dinner from the little Mediterranean place she loved.
I even bought the stupid pistachio cake she always claimed she didn’t like before eating half of mine.
I walked into our house at 6:12.
Marissa was at the dining table with her tablet.
“You’re early.”
“Yeah.”
She looked at the takeout bag.
“Did something happen?”
There are people who sense bad news before you say it.
