shock

Weekend Writing Prompt — The Letter

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Michael checked the mail absently, coffee in hand. One envelope bore Sarah’s handwriting. Strange, he thought. She never wrote letters. He tore the envelope open.

“Dear Michael, I am sorry, but I’ve found someone else…”

The words blurred. Three years, gone in three sentences. He’d been planning to propose next month. The ring was in his sock drawer.

He accidentally knocked over his cup, spilling coffee on the table.

He didn’t notice.

Written for Sammi Cox’s Weekend Writing Prompt, where the challenge is “letter” in exactly 72 words.

Writer’s Workshop — You’re Fired

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For his Writer’s Workshop this week, John Holton gives us six writing prompts and we are tasked with choosing one of the prompts (or as many as we want) and writing a post that addresses that (or those) prompts). I chose one prompt for this week: (6) Write an essay entitled “How I Coped With Losing My Job.”

How I Coped With Losing My Job

It was a Thursday in early November of 2007. I walked into my boss’ office for my regularly scheduled, biweekly one-on-one meeting with him. But this one was different.

He wouldn’t look me in the eye when I started talking, but that wasn’t that unusual. He was never one for eye contact. I started giving him my update when he cut me off and awkwardly said something about having the challenging task to give me some difficult news. Then he informed that was one of the 271 employees at my firm to be notified that day that their jobs were being eliminated, and, as a result of this reduction in force (or “RIF”), I would have two months to find another position within the firm or I’m out.

I was less shocked or surprised than I was pissed that, after 14 years with this firm, and with significant successes in my current role, I had been so unceremoniously dumped. I was on the north side of 61 years at the time and had been working full-time for forty years. I was not ready to retire, either financially or emotionally. But, at the same time, given my age, I wasn’t sure how difficult it might be to find a job with a different company.

My initial inclination was to reach out to an employment attorney and initiate a big, fat age discrimination law suit. Instead of acting on that, though, I decided to first “test the waters.”

The reception from the outside to my new status had been encouraging. I e-mailed my resume to a number of folks and quickly lined up an interview with an external company. The initial feedback from others I had contacted had been positive.

One guy wrote, “I absolutely think we’d be interested in talking to you. I’m going to forward your resume to the person who manages our recruiting and to our consulting practice leader. I’m sure they will reach out to you soon.”

Another wrote, “I am very sorry to hear about your news. Well, maybe not completely sorry in the end if a mutual interest here works out in our collective favor.”

“I am going to share your info with a number of folks today. I’m glad, and not at all surprised, that you’re getting fast interest,” wrote yet another.

All Fluxed Up

I also had a couple of internal interviews scheduled within the first week of being told of the RIF, but I was inclined to look elsewhere. There were so many changes going on within my company — organizationally as well as directionally — and things were in such a state of flux.

After the way I have been treated, to stay would be like the battered wife who chooses to stay with her abusive husband because he really didn’t mean to hit her and he’s very sorry after he has.

I was starting to feel that my layoff should really be viewed as a great opportunity to jump off of what appeared to be a sinking ship, rather than simply clinging to the familiar.

And pragmatically speaking, I knew that if I stayed until the end of the year and then left, I would be entitled to seven-months of severance pay (two weeks for each year with the firm), but if I were offered an internal position and opted to stay with the company in a different job, I’d lose that. So even if I found a position elsewhere that paid a little less than what I had been earning, I would still be better off going out the door.

As it Turned Out

December 31, 2007 was my last day on the payroll of the company that RIF’d me, a large company with around 31,000 employees worldwide.

February 4, 2008, just over a month later, was my first day at my new job at a small, entrepreneurial company of 370 employees. On September 1, 2010, that small ($60 million, around 400 employees) company I’d worked for over the past two and a half years, was gobbled up by a much larger ($9 billion, 42,000 employees) company. And on December 31, 2016, nine years after I left the company that RIF’d me, I retired.

So how did I cope with losing my job? While I was initially shocked and pissed about being laid off. I quickly bounced back and spent my last nine working years doing just fine.


Badge by Patty,  http://anothercookieplease.com

FFfPP — The Pigeon Problem

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“I’ve tried everything to keep those damn pigeons from landing on this wall and dropping their dirty, nasty poops all over the place for me to clean up,” Julian complained, “but nothing seems to work.”

“Did you try poison?” Eddie asked.

“Yeah, but the authorities made me stop because they were worried that people, especially kids, might accidentally ingest some.”

“What about traps?”

“No, they said I couldn’t put traps on the wall because they might injure a passerby.”

“What about putting an electrified mesh on top of the wall? That way, you’ll zap those airborne rats when they land.”

“I thought of that,” Julian said, “but the risk of people getting shocked ruled that out.”

“I know, I’ll hide in the bushes and shoot them with my shotgun when they land. That’ll teach ‘em.”

“God no,” Julian said. “You can’t go around taking pot shots at birds. What if you accidentally shot someone? But I do have an idea, Eddie.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?”

“Didn’t you say that you recently got laid off and that you’re looking for work?”

“Well, yeah, but….”

“I’ll give you a sponge and a bucket and twenty bucks a day to come by first thing each morning and scrub the wall clean.

“Deal,” Eddie said.

Written for Roger Shipp’s Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner. Photo credit: Pixabay.

A Life In Ruins

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0B2F934E-FA4D-49E2-BFB8-305EEE2EB749My life is in ruins, he thought.

His life, a life he’d worked so hard to make successful, was, indeed, in ruins. As he drove along the road that skirted the ocean, he couldn’t quite fathom what had led him to this place, this sense of desperation. He was tired. And angry. And, most of all, he was sorry. Sorry for all of those he loved. Sorry for the disappointment he knew they were feeling.

No, it wouldn’t be disappointment. It would be shock. No one could have predicted this. It would be like when they interviewed people on the news who have just found out that their neighbor is a serial killer. “I can’t believe that he could have done such a thing,” they’d say. “He seemed like such a pleasant person. I would never have imagined….”

We all have secrets, he told himself. Some bigger — and badder — than others. But what he did was truly unforgivable. He couldn’t stick around to face the shame and the humiliation. Those he left behind would be better off with him being out of the picture.

And so he got in his car and left, heading where even he did not know.

(200 words)

Written for Sue Spaulding’s Sunday Photo Fiction prompt. Photo credit: Anurag Bakhshi. Also written for the Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Tale Weaver prompt, which is “ruins.”

Hacked

Fandango9 Comments

4445C778-18FC-433C-B408-695E9B537B5F“This is Arnold Lewis from Norstar Investments,” the voice on the telephone said. “Are you sitting down, Mr. Corkran?”

“Sitting down? Why should I be sitting down?” Corkran asked.

“I have some news that may shock you,” the voice said.

“What kind of news?”

“I’m sorry to inform you that your brokerage account has been hacked and your entire portfolio has been wiped out,” the man on the phone said.

“What!” Corkran screamed into the phone. “How did this happen? Was it just my account that was hacked?”

“No,” the voice answered. “Unfortunately, our entire system was hacked, although only those portfolios with assets in excess of a million dollars were stolen.”

“Oh my God,” Corkran said. “That was the bulk of my retirement savings. What am I going to do now?”

“I know this is a shock, Mr. Corkran,” the man on the phone said, “but we at Norstar are going to do everything we can to recover your funds. I just need to ask you a few questions. Let’s start with your Social Security number.”

About fifteen minutes later, after answering all of questions Arnold Lewis had asked him during the call, Corkran was telling his wife the shocking news about his portfolio being hacked. “Did you ask him about my brokerage account?” she asked her husband.

“No, I was so shocked by the news that I didn’t think to do that,” Corkran admitted. “I’ll call him back right now.” When the customer representative at the investment firm answered the phone, Corkran asked to speak to Arnold Lewis.

“I’m sorry, the woman said, “but there’s no Arnold Lewis who works here.”

“That’s not possible. I just spoke to him about half an hour ago and he told me that your firm had been hacked and my portfolio had been wiped clean.”

“Our firm has not been hacked, Mr. Corkran. Please tell me you didn’t give that man any of your personal information.”

“Oh shit!” Corkran exclaimed.

Written for today’s one-word prompt, “shock.”