unemployed

Unemployment Part Deux Day 1

Tomorrow would have been the three month mark at my new company. Apparently I was not destined to make it that far.

Yesterday started out as a peculiar Monday. I missed my usual bus but it was warmer than it’s been in about 2 weeks, so I stood and waited for the next one. I accidentally picked a very tight bus seat, and had a woman with a very large coat sat next to me. I made it to Starbucks before realizing I didn’t have enough money to pay for my coffee in full, so I reloaded my app. I was the first into the office, but couldn’t find my keys, and waited until the next person got in to open the door. I put on mascara as my coworkers trickled in. It was a very gray Monday and I assumed that the funk over the office was because of that. My office friend, who happens to be the head of the office currently, seemed to be avoiding my eye, but it is Monday morning, most people tend to avoid eye contact until at least noon.

By 12:30, it seemed as if the office had emptied out. Everyone must be at lunch, I thought, so I gathered my things and sat in the office kitchen while I heated up my chicken soup. As the microwave buzzed, I scrolled through my twitter feed, uncomfortably perched on the edge of the stool while the microwave counted down the minute. Suddenly a notification crossed my screen. It was from the head of HR. What could she want?

“hey, I’m in the back. come and see me” she said. Well that is strange, isn’t it? Seeing as her office is in Austin. “Sure!” I answered, as my heart began to pound. I know what this is, and this will not end well. I walked toward the back office avoiding coworkers as I went.

In less the ten minutes I was out of the office, thin manila envelope in hand. I half smiled at the account executive who watched me as I made my way to my desk. She knows what just went down, I can see the pity in her eyes. I closed out my tabs on my laptop and shut it down. This is it, I thought, time to clean out my desk. I filled a shopping bag with the snacks that had accumulated at my desk, making sure to check everywhere, in case I forgot something. I waved goodbye to another girl who had been given a similar manila envelope and hit the down button on the elevator.

But now what?

I called my fiancé, jobless, I laughed. This is comical, isn’t it? Five months prior I had been in the exact same position. I called my parents, they told me they were sorry for me, I understand, this is an awkward topic for most people. What do you say? How do you comfort someone when they’d only been with the company for 3 months? I’m not sure, but I guess it doesn’t really matter.

Back to the drawing board, I suppose.

Day 6 of Unemployment

My mom keeps telling me to use this time to plan my wedding. So now I’m trying to actually care about it. Hopefully visiting venues and seeing what each has to offer will help me give a shit about the wedding. All I care about is the being married part. I’m excited to wake up next to him every morning, to get home at night and him be there. It’s the part that involves a priest is what I don’t care much for… wish me luck.

Day 2 of Unemployment

Today is the Friday before Labor Day weekend. I won’t lie, things could be worse.

Every year, at the end of summer, my grandparents make tomato sauce in their backyard. The entire block smells of boiling tomatoes and hard work. In their old age, they’ve moved into the summer home they’ve owned since 1978; a newly renovated beauty in a beach town that has the second highest concentration of Irish-Americans in the US, called Breezy Point, NY. They’ve always been the “odd man out” here, not truly understanding the Irish customs or traditions that their neighbors celebrate and vice versa. But, after emigrating to Brooklyn from a small southern Italian town in the ’60s, they’ve learned to keep their heads down and cause no problems.

Anyway, today was the day for sauce. I was the lucky one chosen to pick up the tomatoes this morning at 7:30 and make the traffic-filled trek out to Breezy Point with a pickup bed full of tomato bushels and a Nesquik in hand.

After MANY hours of work, we have finally added the finished jars to the heat to seal and preserve them. Today was full of annoying issues and difficult situations, but finally, all 20+ bushels are done and we can celebrate. As all 16 of us sit around the table for the first taste of our newly made sauce, it’s great to remember that I wouldn’t have been able to help today if I had a job, I wouldn’t have been able to carry on the tradition.

I guess we can consider that the silver lining.

Day 1 of Unemployment

Last night, at about 5:50pm in New York, I was asked to meet my managing director in a conference room to discuss a media plan I had been working on. I was already not thrilled to be at work, I knew today would be a “late day” and that I wouldn’t get home before 9pm. There was still much to be done and multiple media plans due the next day.

Instead, I was told not to worry about the plan. The company, as a whole, wasn’t doing well and no advertising money was coming in at the moment. As a Planner for the Sales Team I was well aware of their lack of incoming dollars, but stupidly assumed my job was safe; they needed both sales planners in order to handle the amount of proposals that were being created and distributed in order to combat this.

Apparently I was wrong.

Therefore, at 6:03pm last night, I gathered my snacks from out of my desk drawer, took my office sweater, and left without a word to anyone, never to return.

I can’t say I’m angry about how this went down. It was an unfortunate turn of events, especially because I have been discussing a new job with another company that won’t come to fruition until at least the end of September. But still, it’s a disappointing feeling knowing that you failed at something that takes up the majority of your time.

Slowly my team is sharing the news with the rest of the company. Last night as I was getting of the train I got my first “I’m sorry” text. I imagine it will be similar to when a family member dies, people will be awkward and tiptoe around the subject, afraid to be too direct and risk too much emotion at once.

But in reality, what am I to do?

Today is the Thursday before Labor Day weekend. If I would’ve known this would happen, I would have planned a trip. But that’s silly to say, since, if I would’ve known this would happen, things could have happened very differently.

So here I sit, with a shitty protein shake that I made this morning for breakfast, slowly trying to figure out what I want to do and where I want to go from here. Maybe a little traveling would be nice. All I know is that I have all the time in the world to write, so there goes that excuse.