End of an Era. Again.

In May, my job was eliminated and even though I had been tremendously frustrated by the experience towards the end and thought I’d prepared myself for the inevitable layoff, it still hit like a ton of bricks. Even though I wasn’t in love with the job, it was a job, and it was my job, and change is yucky.

And then true to fashion for the Company, they realized how much work I was doing that they couldn’t immediately farm out. They hired me on a part-time/contract basis and on I soldiered, doing what I was used to doing.

I continued with the contract work through the summer while interviewing for jobs.

I continued after I started my new job.

I continued even after I realized how tired I was working a full day, coming home and working some more.

I knew that they would be transitioning my role, that it was fading and that they’d hired someone who could do the same thing and more, but in house. So it wasn’t like I thought it was a permanent situation. Hell, I didn’t want to work there forever anymore.

And then.

At the beginning of January, I tried to log on to my computer to get some work done. And couldn’t. A call to technical support told me my account was disabled and I left a voice mail message for the woman I reported to. The next day she called me back to say: “Oh, December 31 was your last day. I forgot to tell you.”

So, I guess I’m done.

I sent my materials back, and with very little fanfare it’s over and done and after ten years of working for the Company (whose name I am still not mentioning because it’s not nice), it’s over.

And while I have to say: it was good while it lasted and I am grateful for the part time work to hold me over while I searched for and found a job, I find it amazing to believe that ten years of service and hard work doesn’t warrant more courtesy than an “Oops, I forgot.”

I guess I should be so grateful, in this economy, to have had a job that I would happily excuse bad behavior but instead I am left with an odd feeling: I am relieved to have had the experience, I am relieved to be saying goodbye to them at a time when I saw it coming and I didn’t need them, and yet I have this bad taste in my mouth of how is there so little regard for the PEOPLE in an organization that a little courtesy didn’t seem to register on one’s radar long enough to actually follow through with it.

It is what it is.

Because ultimately the end result is this: I have work. I now have a little more free time that I was ready to have. I don’t have to come home and start another shift of work with their projects.

It’s all good, right?

Yes. It really is.

Wishing they’d handled it differently surely doesn’t make it so. Feeling that I deserved more kindness at the closure doesn’t make it happen. And since I haven’t invented a time machine and surely they haven’t either, it can’t be re-done, undone, or changed.

It is what it is.

And so it goes and so it’s done.

And life goes on.