What Can I Say About Losing My Job — Apparently, A Lot — Conflict and Scotch

At some point this year, along with a few thousand of my co-workers, we will lose our jobs. I can live with it, close to a decent retirement age, so I’m not as concerned if this happened, say, seventeen years ago.

Oh, wait — that’s right — it did.

Back in 2003 I was let go from my job. It was a very special week that year. My divorce was finalized on Monday and my job ended that Friday. I was out of work for a year-and-a-half. Went back to the same company as a contractor for a while thanks to my old boss, Jim.

A little something about Jim — when I was going through my divorce in 1999, I barely slept and drank more than I should have (much worse than I do today). The company should have fired me, I was that debilitated, but Jim did everything possible to keep me employed. Not to go into details, but I was bad, and I don’t know what miracle St. Jim pulled out of the air, but I would be forever in his debt (unless, of course, if he wants me to help him move, then he’s on his own).

Then, after being unemployed for eighteen months, Jim had a contract job for me back in the company. He left me with very strict instructions: “Go straight to the conference room and don’t talk to anyone, we have to get you hired before someone finds out.”

Why those specific instructions? Apparently, the letter you are about to read did not go over with some of the management. And by management, that included the president of the company.

Some housekeeping notes, in the letter I had my old AOL email, which no longer works. There is also a link that is no longer active. There are references that may be out of date, and there are some references that now, in hindsight, seem prophetic. Otherwise, this is the email that went out to several hundred employees in March of 2003.

Enjoy…

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I guess when it comes down to losing your job, they say it’s all in the numbers. Here are some numbers: 18 years with one company. That comes to over 22,042 days, 176,336 work hours, 33,063 cups of coffee, and a couple of dozen people that I consider to be friends. Those are the numbers that should be important, but I guess they’re not in the light of the fact that tomorrow, March 15th, is my last day at AT&T.

Apparently, my numbers didn’t match with their numbers. That’s okay. Apparently, my skill set didn’t match their needs. That is funny, since I gained my skill set here at AT&T. I’m sure some other company will benefit from my skills; I’m not worried about that.

Of course, it is sad to leave a place where you worked for nearly two decades. Unfortunately, my gut feeling is that if it didn’t happen today, it would happen six months from now, or one year from now. I’m just getting a head start on the rush that is sure to come. You simply cannot continually cut the legs from a company, and then expect it to run.

Do I sound bitter? Probably. But I’ve learned that change is usually a good thing. What does bother me, however, is that not one of my managers seems capable of telling me exactly why I was lucky enough to be downsized. When I asked my manager why I was selected, my answer from her was,

“Why do YOU think you were downsized?”

I’m not sure if adopting a Socratic form of workforce reduction is a good way to handle this situation. Personally, I found the question to be insulting and, similar, in fact, of asking a man dying of thirst if he’d prefer salt-water or sand to drink. If that is the management left in this company, I’m glad to be going.

To give credit to the other side, I have had some wonderful managers during my time here; managers that were actually concerned about my career, and about me. Managers that have guided me in the right direction, and I credit those managers with giving me the skill set that will soon be a benefit to some other company. Unfortunately, I have also had managers who kept me up at night; mangers whom I wanted to avoid because their inability to manage a group made my job that much more difficult. Those managers I’m glad to leave behind.

I’m not her to decry AT&T as a bad company but, given my 18 years, I think I should be allowed my voice on this subject. And, since my last day falls on the Ides of March, I feel compelled to paraphrase Shakespeare:

“Friends, Roman, Countrymen, lend me your ears

I come here not to bury AT&T,

But to change your long distance to Sprint…”

Of course, I would never solicit anyone else to go to

http://csg.sprint.com/longdistance/landing_longdistance.shtml?refurl=uhp_personal_longdistance to change their long distance. But for me, if AT&T doesn’t want me as an employee, I’m sure they wouldn’t want me as a customer, either.

Please don’t ‘Reply All’ to this e-mail if you’d like to get back in touch with me. For one thing, this e-mails address probably won’t be working after tomorrow. Please feel free to contact me on AOL: moon2458@aol.com. Another reason not to reply all is that I’ve included quite a few people on my address list. This means my managers, including Mike Armstrong. Why, you might ask, would I include them? If I remember my corporate-speak correctly, I don’t work for my managers, but they are here to support me. So, I just wanted to let them know, ‘Guys, you didn’t do a very good job of supporting me — I’m unemployed’.

Eighteen years is a long time, and I have to thank AT&T for the incredible changes that have occurred in my life over that time period. Before coming to AT&T in 1984, I was single, unemployed, and driving around in a ten-year-old car with over 150,000 miles on it. Now, after all this time, I leave divorced, unemployed, and driving around in a ten-year-old car with over 150,000 miles on it…hmmmmm, now that I think about it…

Well, as I said at the top of this letter, it all comes down to numbers. Well, as a parting gift, I will now give you the secret of the universe. Its:

42

There, now you know. Do with that information as you wish. For me, I’m going home and sleeping late on Monday.

Have fun.

Al

Originally published at https://www.conflictandscotch.com on February 4, 2020.