Buckle up for safety, this could be a long one:
tl;dr - my job was eliminated; got a wonderful separation package; taking some serious me/family time for the foreseeable future.
I work(ed) for a $26B company that has (er, had) 2 operating groups... one 'technology', and one 'electronics'. Back in September, a competitor of ours announced they were were buying the technology group, which I was a part of. The acquisition didn't officially close until Monday of this week. Tuesday, I (along with 20 other team-mates) got the call that our group was being eliminated. There were also other job actions taken - all told, 60 people in North America. There were a lot of indicators that the writing was on the wall over the past few months, and it got REAL clear last week that things weren't going to be rosy in anyway for me or our team - whether we were kept, or ultimately as it turned out, through workforce reduction. To tell you the truth, things haven't been rosy for quite sometime. My job has been more of a frustration and burden than anything else for about the last 6-12 months. There's always frustrations in any job/company, but up until last year, the joys and pleasures that came along with my job always outweighed the frustrations. Then, sometime last year, that coin flipped and I haven't been happy for a real long time (as some of you know). I could probably write a short novel on the issues, but it's not necessary. Pay, boss, lack of internal support, unrealistic and unachievable expectations, to name a few. Then, everything for a most areas of the company became an absolute shit-show after the announcement of the acquisition back in September. In some regards, that was the beginning of the end - because if not for the acquisition, it is without doubt that the reductions that took place on Tuesday would have happened September 28th, not February 28th. Now, a lot of this is natural in an merger/acquisition, so it is what it is. I have no hard feelings or take any of this personally in any way, shape or form.
In an odd way, I've kinda been waiting for, and wanting, this for a while. And for those that don't know, Canada has some very liberal/socialistic labour laws. That + 15 years of service = a very comfortable separation package. So, no apologies, sympathies or condolences are needed in any way. Unless something presents itself that is the proverbial 'offer I can't refuse', I'm going to take at least a month or two (maybe more) of me and jingle.family time. I've never been affected by a workforce reduction, or fired, or without a job. This is the first time since I graduated university that I've been unemployed ... and I will take advantage of all the advantages of unemployment - while having total financial security. When I spoke with my financial advisor about the situation and my severance package, the first two words out of his month were "THAT'S FANTASTIC!". Now, I'm not sure if that was for my benefit, or for his own
. Either way, I'm in no rush or hurry or worry about getting a job, or in a position where I have to be concerned about how to pay the bills. Through good luck, good fortune or good planning (or all of that), I'm in a very comfortable financial position.
So, now I can try and re-capture the 'old' me. As many of you know, I have depression, and every day is a struggle - some more than others. The burdens of the job have not helped that over the past while. I got the news about this at 10am on Tuesday. My instant reaction was 'relief'. By the end of the day, I was telling my friends and colleagues "I'm liberated". By the time I was out for a walk with Mrs.Jingle and the dogs at 11am Wednesday, I told her that I could physically feel the burden and weight coming off me. Literally - not figuratively - I could physically feel the relief. She said to me that when I got up that morning, both she and the jingle.kids could see, sense and feel the difference in me.
So, while not a happy thing, this is by no means a bad thing. The silver lining on this cloud is as big - if not bigger - than the cloud itself.