The Bottom Line doesn’t care that you’ve worked someplace for 23 years, overseeing the transition from three different systems, skipping lunch hours and not putting in overtime. The Bottom Line doesn’t care about the snowy, icy mornings you didn’t call in sick, but came in with MS, moving on a cane, and you were the only one to make it into work and from seventeen miles away.
No. The Bottom Line dares not see or feel any of that. Surely, they can find someone to do it for half the salary. And when income drops, nothing else matters, certainly not quality. It’s better because it’s cheaper. And you know that Aetna told them that you cost them too much and it would give the Bottom Line even more savings to let you go.
One day, you look up and realize that there are five managers standing in a circle around your desk. Your mind is stuck in the task at hand and all the important things yet to be done and they tell you to come into their office and forget what’s on your to do list. It’s now a to don’t list. They hand you packets of legal papers and describe it in a blur in a group of other stunned employees. You have to go to the bathroom and you left your work onscreen.
They told me that I didn’t have to do any more. I could just pack up and go home. I asked if I was being paid for a full shift. They said “yes.” So, I said, “Then I am going to finish my work.” All the other laid offs had left. The managers were stunned, wondering if I was planning sabotage, but no. I had to finish my work and make sure everything was in order. Older workers have this useless, annoying habit of wanting to finish the job.
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