One Way Door

I'm utterly without a security badge for the first time in seven years...

-and there it is....

I clear this door, and I'm forever on the outside of CorpWorld.











Feels kinda good.

Walking papers

This is really happening.

I'm having tea, looking out the window at people piling out of an airplane.

I re-read the email. It still means the same thing it meant the first ten times I read it.

I will no longer work for CorpWorld.

*******

This was always going to happen, and I was stupid to think otherwise. When I left a small non-profit for the wilds of corporate contract work, I believed they would hire me as permanent staff. The same starry-eyed idealism that fueled my design instincts convinced me that being hired was simply inevitable.

Despite meeting contractors with ten or more years at CorpWorld - I still thought "any day now, they're going to snap me up."

I've had managers tell me they would - but they weren't allowed. Project managers have marveled "how have we not hired you yet?"

I'd always shrug and say "always a bridesmaid, never a bride."
But the joke got less funny and more sad with each telling. Five years, six - I'm good enough to pay, but not good enough for benefits?

My team was always too big, ridiculously so when I started, so when we started losing people - I'd selfishly thought that once the purge was over, they'd start bringing people aboard.

I'd told myself I was kept on for a reason. Because I was good at my job. Easy to think, hard to know.

And very easy to doubt.

That night N called me to tell me they were part of our UX team's first big layoff - yeah, that had me doubting. N was good at their job, too. And it didn't save them.

The UX team getting smaller no longer felt like a corporate adjustment - it was a trend.  I might be good at my job, but I've come to believe what spared me was less personal: the people who were cut cost more than I did.

I was cheaper.

The relief I felt at staying was somewhat tainted with this new theory, but it was still relief.

I get to stay.

I remember H walking along one of CorpWorld's many skywalks, gesturing to the view of the campus "every day I thank God I work here."

Because CorpWorld is a marvel. They have too much of everything. Multiple cafes and cafeterias. Walking paths through a manicured campus. Where else could a green UX guy get to run remote video testing in a fully stocked U-lab? I had access to resources that I'd no right to.

I had a chair that cost more than I used to pay for a month's rent.

No right whatsoever.

But the moment you start thinking you might have to go -that you should start preparing - that's when the dread starts.

Because CorpWorld pays well. Sure, you get a raise almost never - but the rate is one you'll have a hard time getting outside the wire. Particularly if you don't have a slew of letters after your name.

Me? No letters. I'm all experience. Eight years of doing the work.

On paper, that's worth something. But anyone can say they have experience, try shopping that on the road.

Which is why people have references and portfolios.

CorpWorld does not give references. They will only confirm dates of employment.
And your work product is their work product. Bound by an NDA.

Still, you could shop the fact that you worked in the industry - but there's a non-compete clause in your contract. Anyone in the same industry isn't supposed to hire you.

So you can shop your self to an unrelated industry, using your say so that you did good work.

Odds that you'll get comparable pay with a suitcase of nothing? Not good.

Yeah, you could tell your staffing company to pull you out, but they won't unless you tell CorpWorld you're looking for a job outside. If things don't work out and you want to stay - you've told CorpWorld to put you in the front of the downsize line.

Stay and work - or roll the dice outside?  Not much of a choice. I let my resume go stale and I stayed.

Whatever the reason - I'd been spared - hooray, right?

I was lucky in other ways, too.
My project was a colossus. A multi-year beast, followed by another one even bigger. There was no shortage of work.

My colleagues on smaller projects would gripe about getting Buckets - or getting buy in from clients - not me. My Buckets were full and the clients respected my work. At least I thought so.

The second and third rounds of layoffs took team members who were on smaller projects. They'd been scrabbling for solid work, getting make-work projects where they were an afterthought or worse.
"I'm a stenographer for the clients," one teammate told me.  "They tell me what the UI will be and I document it. If someone tells me the UI has changed, I update the document."

This person had advanced degrees in design and human factors - they were being asked to take notes from a corporate hipshooter. They weren't alone. Some of them fled, selling their credentials on the open market. Others held on until the work dried up and were let go.

Good people, all of them. Until we were down to a core group of nine.

Sensei and I were on the same big project together. Two products getting built in parallel, A and B. B was my product - the less important of the two - and it was getting shelved. Product B's staff was rolled into Sensei's A team to increase velocity - and I was working like mad to make sure they kept me.

And they kept me. Spock, the Machine and I worked along side Sensei's A team. The overall project was overstaffed, but the client was letting it ride - since we'd split off and product B eventually.

Again I was lucky, our client synced well with our team. And Spock and the Machine are rock stars.
Sensei was less fortunate, their A team had difficult clients and two team members who did not get along. Their productivity began to slip. Early on, this didn't matter, but it was noticed.

My team reveled in knocking out the work. You need this in a week? Guess what? It was done yesterday. You're welcome. As the A and B teams were in the same pool of work, we felt some rivalry. Getting attaboys from management made our B team feel special. I know I did. But, it was all in good fun, right? Until CorpWorld announced a big round of layoffs were coming.

I could literally spend hours writing about how sick I felt in retrospect - I tried, actually. Wrote a post I was going to call 'Zero Sum' - but it was crap. There is no way to adequately express how disgusted I am at how clueless I was at how my actions hurt others. I wanted to win. To be seen winning. And I never gave a thought to how that would poison things for others until the day Sensei came to tell me they were planning to leave CorpWorld.

Sensei had letters after their name - and they were no fool. They jumped ship, shortly before the rest of their team got let go or taken off the project.

Sensei bailing out was unthinkable to me. They were the reason I was anywhere in CorpWorld. Brought me into my first projects and made sure I knew enough to get along. Sensei cannot help but help - it's who they are. And to hear the weariness, the dread in their voice as they described why they had to go... It was beyond horrible.

They taught you everything and you're going to just sit there and do nothing in return.

I wished them well, but that's pretty much the same thing.

Being awesome, Sensei has since gone on to far better things, but I won't forget the look of dread in Sensei's face the day  they told me they had to get out.

Sensei had realized something I would willfully deny even after Black Wednesday.

CorpWord was done with the UX group.

*******

Once the UX group was a department. We were a team. Almost thirty.

Then we were 18. Then 15. Then 9. Sensei's departure made us 8.

Black Wednesday made us 4.
Din was let go before the year ended. I hear they're working for a bank in the big city.
Ruby went shortly thereafter.

And Stimpy formally changed departments last week. They get to do real UX work again in the lab - and they'll be free of Smiler.

I'm embarrassed I didn't think to try for the gig Stimpy got - I've been at CorpWorld longer, but Stimpy is more than capable and deserves some real work. Under Smiler, all they've been getting are short term write up gigs and make-work tasks.  Stimpy has had the look I've seen on too many faces these days - the face of somebody afraid for their job.

It's the look I've had for longer than I care to admit.

I couldn't begin to count all the flashes of panic that ripped through the building this past year. And they can come from anything. A client's smirk or a badly phrased email will grip you like vise until you beat it back with logic or indifference.

I'm. Still. Here.

I'd stopped bothering E with these rumors to spare her the yo-yo of "I'm doomed/I'm safe" that I'd put her through the previous few years. Truth is, I'm worried that I've grown numb to it. Something real might come along and I'd miss the signs. That first time I mouthed off to Anjin-san about my hours dropping I had no intention of doing anything. But Anjin-san is about doing things - so they referred me to that job opportunity that went nowhere. It felt good to try, though. Shake the cobwebs out of the resume, talk about things I can do - instead of sit at my desk and wonder what the hell I'm supposed to do.

I'd gotten to contact Ruby, the Artist and Sensei to ask them to be references. I hate asking for things like that, but they all responded so positively it was a wonderful feeling. Ruby even offered to help polish my resume - a task I hate more than just about anything. I'm not much of a networker, but I used to work with some truly great people. It was so great hearing from them.

But that's done. I'd given resumes to three places and the only one to even contact me was Anjin-san's gig. The recruiters strung me out for a while, but ultimately admitted the hiring manager wasn't returning their calls anymore.

I'd surfed for UX positions in town and found old listings for jobs I know are taken - because I know the people who took them. And there are endless recruiters out there that want to pull you into "an exciting three month gig in Boulder, CO."  F*&k that with a bag of dicks, thank you.

But you have to be realistic. Ask yourself how many paychecks you can miss before your standards slip? How many weeks will you make it before serious financial waves start landing on you? I'm no pauper, but like most of America - my income is spoken for. Yeah, I can drop cable and economize - but the big bills will still land and take me under without a comparable salary.

If the only UX job was travel - I might have to do it. Or change careers.

I start wondering about unemployment insurance. Whether I get it if CorpWorld drops me but my staffing company keeps me on the books.

This is the sh!t that keeps you up at night, when you've finally decided that sweating over Buckets is a waste of time.

Another thing? I overheard one of my clients the other day talking to one of our testers. The tester was saying there was a requirement that there be a sign off for the UX standards of the application. The tester wanted to know who would provide the sign off now that there is no formal department for UX. My client - a person I've worked with for years, someone who I believe respects me and my work - told the tester to delete the UX sign off requirement.

Because, y'know. Who's going to care right? They've all left. I could sign off, but nobody would care.

I'm it. F*%-ing Chingachgook. Me.

Smiler's sending me more project work to fill in the gaps. I'm remembering them telling me they were relieved that Stimpy left the group. "Because I don't have enough work for two. Now, I don't have to choose...[which one of you to fire]"

They smiled.

My second to last email from them detailed a list of potential projects I could work on. All of them suck. One of them is literally UX work for a vendor supplied software patch to a vendor product. Nothing to do. Worse, its project manager is Dancing Bear - one of the most useless human beings I've run across in CorpWorld. No one with less to do has ever acted so busy. This person could make checking their watch a billable task. And they are steering the ship of useless that I'm to board next week.

This is fricking insane. I'm downhill on my main project headed for a pile of nothing that's never gonna break my fall.

*******

Outside, the plane is getting towed over to the de-icer.

And my lunch date has arrived.

They'd called me out of the blue a few days ago. It'd been so long, They had to remind me who they were. I made them send me an email so I'd have tangible proof that this meeting would really happen.

I'd been re-reading that email all morning. It said:

"Finally got everything pinned down, and have approval to go ahead with hiring him."

It's from the manager of the job Anjin-san referred me to. Four weeks of total silence, followed by this. The offer is better than I'd asked for.

The recruiters sit down with me.

"Lunch is on us."

Damn right it is. We shake hands and I apply ink to paper.

For two months, I've been counting every Friday as a victory - then living in fear of the next Monday.

I was half into the abyss-and my colleagues reached down and pulled me out. Domo, Anjin-san. Sensei, Ruby and the Artist. No way I get this without you.

More pay, more vacation, less commute & a contract to hire. Unbe-effing-lievable.

The recruiters smile and start talking about airplanes.

I barely notice them.

All I can think of is: somehow, hurtling earthward end over end-

I found the goddamn rip cord.

Bucket Hunting

Can I get a Bucket for..?
    -CorpWorld traditional

In CorpWorld, it’s all about the buckets.

Buckets of time, that is… digital containers with a capacity measured in hours. And not just any hours – hours that have been blessed by accounting types.
Behind this simple integer is all manner of corporate political knavery. Lies were told, blood was shed and careers toppled – but your managers have emerged from the carnage with Buckets.

For now your project has been given life.

By extension – this means that you can be paid.

Sweet, sweet money…Huzzah!

This being CorpWorld, tracking your time and effort requires duplicate entries in four separate systems, but because the Buckets are upstream they are the most important.

Without Buckets, there is no work. This fact is often lost on those who work on multi-year projects. A steady supply of Buckets makes it easy to forget that someone higher up than you earned the sworn vengeance of their rivals to hook you up to the money supply.

This leaves you free to do battle with the second tier of time-tracking in CorpWorld – the task hours. But we don’t care about that, really – because task hours are not truly subordinate and rise and fall without respect to how many hours are in your actual Bucket.

Case in point: For a period of about twenty working days I will log 60 hours of task hours towards my project. Over the same period, I will log 160 hours of Bucket time. How can this be?

In actual fact, I will be at work doing tasks for 160 hours or so, but the additional overhead and hassle of wrangling my task hours to be in line with this level of effort is not worth it for anyone.

As in: I have two pools of task hours – Task A for 40 hours and Task B for 20. In the middle of Day 8, a tester comes to me and says “I think this screen has a bug, would you agree?”

I do. In fact looking at the screen it is clear that not only is this a bug in the design – it is a bug I’ve created by not testing an input string that is stupidly long and composed entirely of capital Ws. A tester, being a tester, does this – and finds my work wanting.

This needs to be done before some code moves, and I know exactly what to fix – so I tell them I’ll get on this right away.

Officially, what I am expected to do is nothing. The tester is supposed to enter the problem, attach screenshots, and assign it to my GroupManager.
Then my GroupManager is supposed to ignore this assignment, because being assigned to the GroupManager is the equivalent of being unassigned. A system designer or tech lead will then review the issue to determine if this is really an issue, verify that it is still occurring and assign it to a developer.

There is a good chance that this item will get assigned to me, but it’s not a sure thing. Once it is assigned to a resource –  that person will analyze the bug and then go to the TeamLeader who will go to the GroupManager and request time to perform the work. As task hours are a hot button issue these days, creating a new task will require managerial sign off. Since this is a bug, the approval is assured, but it will take time.
If I get the bug – there will be no analysis, since I know what the problem is. If someone else gets it, there could be some ramp up time.

At the end of the process, all of these people will have task hours to do this work- but the bug will sit idle for a few days. And there will be some lost time in transferring knowledge about what the bug really is.

And upstream of all of this, I’m 100% funded to work on this project, so nobody on my team gives a crap if I create a two hour task or not. The work will get done and I’ll bill time to the project – since I bill all my time to the project.

As it turns out, the bug is a bigger issue, since the problem will happen anywhere you max out an input with capital Ws. Following the process, I would have revised my estimate from 2 hours to 5 (and still been wrong) and someone would look at a report and see my graph of remaining work as increasing rather than decreasing. This would be true, but it would not be welcome information. “Why are you not making progress?” NewManager would ask, “We have to make our deadline!”
“Yes, but we have to fix this before we go live, and my other tasks don’t affect the deadline. They can wait while I work on this.”

NewManager will stick to their guns, because tasks that wait will appear on their managers reports and cause a ripple of unpleasantness that they will have to explain. They do not want this – no matter what the actual picture is – and they will make the point that assigned tasks will get done within their 20 day allotment. Period.

Group manager and TeamLeader will have to explain this to me. Being sensible types, they will explain it thusly: “Go back to your original estimate and do what you need to do to fix this issue.” What this means is that the tracking software (like all tracking software) only cares about the work that is entered into it. So long as my task graph continues to slope downward – all is sweetness and light.

With this in mind – I do the obvious thing: I keep the bug out of the system and run it to ground. It’s pretty easy to fix, but there are a lot of places this issue will occur so I end up burning about eight hours finding all the locations where this will occur and making sure it will behave across our supported browsers. Bang, done. Deploy the code in time to make the deadline and log the fix against my 40 hour task. Everybody is happy and I’ve saved several people a lot of hassle, including myself.

Again, tracking time in two systems when the only time that matters is being tracked in Buckets that arrive, fully loaded each and every week.

But one week – they don’t.

NewManager calls me into their office to tell me that instead of being 100% on the project, I will be shifted to 50% in the next month or so.
This information must be logged in some system, because shortly thereafter I’m contacted by Smiler, my other manager.

Meeting with Smiler is always a bit of a dance. They are cordial enough, they are nice enough – but there is no professional rapport between us. 

Smiler asks if I am truly going to be 50% on my project going forward. I say I am. Smiler assures me that they will look into my future allocations. I thank them and go back to my desk.

Then I start updating my resume.

Because the truth is, I am afraid of Smiler.

According to CorpWorld’s lattice, Smiler has the most direct responsibility to fire me – yet my only interaction with them is asking them to sign my timesheet. They don’t see my work, understand my work or (seemingly) have any interest in it.

My introduction to them was not encouraging – my former colleagues met in a room to review a new set of policies that were immediately in effect. Their underlying purpose was clear: cut expenses. Smiler stressed this repeatedly to a room full of people who they clearly viewed as expenses. So much so that two of them were let go within a few months.

One of the new policies made it clear that I was I was no longer allowed to work remotely. There was a broadly worded reason for this, yet I knew several people identically situated who continued to work remotely. I questioned this in hopes there was some leeway to keep this work option and was met with a grim look of contempt. The smile was gone, but only long enough to let me know that the conversation was over.

Before their layoff, Ruby told me they’d gone to Smiler about Buckets. Asked what they should to do if there weren’t enough project buckets to make full time hours. Smiler’s response was essentially: “Stay home.” Anyone paying attention to Ruby’s allocation could have seen the looming deficit and taken action – even if it was just to give a warning. Instead Ruby was told the week it started. “Surprise! You’re a part-timer now.”

Prior to this the only one-to-one meeting I’ve had with Smiler was so they could chastise me for using a general Bucket for non-project work (like waiting for tech support to fix your machine). I was never to put more than an hour a week in this Bucket. Period.

And then the smile came back. “You can go.”

Part of the reason Smiler has had little to do with me is that my Buckets have always been full.

Now my Buckets were half empty and Smiler was my best option for more. In my years at CorpWorld, I’ve faced a good amount of corporate death. Panicked phone calls by laid off colleagues, the sudden dismissals of a third of my department, and the subsequent shattering of the unit. There were four survivors.

Now Stimpy and I are the last two. A backhanded compliment, or they just haven’t gotten around to finishing us off.

What the hell am I doing here?

I let fly with some grief to a former colleague – someone who bailed out to get a permanent gig – then watched their new gig go bankrupt right before their start date. They’d landed on their feet after awhile and were clearly on the upswing. They asked me if I needed a job. They were leaving their newest gig – said it wasn’t right for them, but that it might be for me.

“Are you serious?, hell yes..! Send it on.”

So I did a phone interview with a recruiter and the gig sounds great. Money’s decent, better vacation, a permanent gig – oh, and they’re way closer to home. I get to do what I do in a mid-size (less bureaucracy, but still funded). This could be great – but there are a lot of unknowns.  

F#*k it, at least I’ll get my résumé in order and get some interview practice.

My former colleague gives me the setup and I interview. It feels like it goes very well, but I’m trying to keep my hopes contained. No sense getting too built up.

I interview on a Thursday, report back to the recruiter on Friday and wait.

For a week. I refuse to contact the recruiter for fear there is some kind of gamesmanship going on. I’ve represented myself as someone who has a job, thank you very much. I don’t want to come across as too eager. The following Friday, the recruiter emails me to tell me they’ve heard back from the client and that I’ll be “very excited” to hear what they have to say.

They set up a meeting for Monday – and again I try not to get too excited. The recruiter is basically telling me this meeting is a formality and that I should provide references. I’m still thinking the big hurdle is that they will show up on Monday and make an offer that is below my salary requirements. I was deliberately forward about these so that nobody’s time got wasted. The recruiter and the client seemed fine with what I’d said, but I figure nothing is set until there’s a contract.

Monday rolls around, I’m meeting the recruiter face to face for the first time and (per tradition) they’re buying me lunch.
They’re talking up the position like they’re still selling it to me. But I’m already sold.

While the senior recruiter is lapsing into his company’s philosophy I sit back and reflect.

Seven years at CorpWorld. Am I really doing this? Every other time the reaper has missed you. You work with an absolutely kick-ass team. Where are you going to find resources and talent like that? Nowhere.

But then I think of N. Twice gone, the last time by their own choice.
And SR.
KR.
And Y.
And R.
And corporate indifference.
And Happy Friday.
And Sensei...who wisely fled in time to miss Black Wednesday.
And Friday, Apok, Isis, and Murdock... who didn't.
Then Din, and finally Ruby.  Ruby who was so burned out after CorpWorld, they changed career tracks.

Over the recruiter’s shoulder, I’m watching a plane taxi in prep for takeoff.

Yeah, I can do this.

I re-acquire the recruiter’s line of blather and they are still going on about the job being a good fit for me. I agree with them in an attempt to move onto the next subject. The offer. I’m braced for disappointment or some kind of switch up – but the recruiter keeps on with his “this is a great time to join this company” spiel.

I try again to cut them off – to focus on the deal we’re about to close – and then it hits me. They don’t have a deal with them.  

Something is wrong.

I press them on it and they admit that they are still waiting for a final approval from the client. Something has changed since Friday’s breathless email – and now we will have to wait “a few days.” But, the head recruiter assures me, they will “make it clear to the client that we need to know by Wednesday.”

All my energy rolls out of me as I realize this person is selling me a line of crap. You don’t tell clients what to do – because they are your client. They pay you, they call the tune. The recruiter wants me to think that they’ve got some pull with a client who already iced them for a week?  

OhJesusGod…

I try to remain positive, but we shake hands and I roll back to work in a funk. I’d bought into it and now it probably won’t happen. After all that keeping my hopes down – I’d been all set to jump.

***************
Back at the office I get an email from Smiler – telling me to meet with Stimpy and take their old projects over, since they are changing roles. I find I’ve been given another general Bucket to do work for Smiler’s group.

Things are looking up.

I meet with Stimpy to arrange the transfer of files and they rattle off three projects. Three! Whoo-hoo! Four projects should easily fill up my time. They want to transfer them over to me in a week or so – which seems fine. My big project has converted me to half time, but I still have a slew of work for them and they should be able to carry me for a week or so. They’ve asked me to do a number of additional wrap up tasks before we put the project docs in storage.

Stimpy tells me they are taking a job with another part of the Company because they were afraid they wouldn’t have enough to do where they were. It sounds like a great opportunity, since they will be actually doing UX work using the gear that has been lying unused since Black Wednesday. I congratulate them.

Stimpy looks at me sadly for awhile. “My projects are winding down, I needed to make a change. I want to stay. I like it here.” Then they tell me that one of their three projects is done as of next week. So I will be getting only two new projects.

Stimpy looks uncomfortable. “These two projects, they are not very big. You should tell Smiler you are available for additional types of work.”

I’m just happy they haven’t been canned. “Let me worry about that – I’ll still have three projects and I have a general Bucket from Smiler. I’ll be fine.”

We set up a meeting to formally hand over the files and project info in two weeks. I tell Smiler I might be light on hours, and that I would be available to do some detailing work in the interim. They look amused.

I contact my staffing company to ask for their help in case the worst happens. They say they’ll contact Smiler and see what’s what.

It’s been a rough set of days, but I’m beginning to level out.

***************

Monday.

I get an email from my GroupManager about buckets. They’ve sent it to the entire team. “I urge you to review your time allocations as some of you have entered time that exceeds your reserves.” That would be CorpWorld for you billed the project for more time than we can give you.


They’ve attached a spreadsheet. I check my name and see that last week I billed full time to the project (because that’s all I worked on) but I was only allowed around 18 hours.

That bit where I thought my current project could carry me? Not happening. I’ve used two weeks worth of project time in one week. Meaning If I enter no project time this week, I’ll balance out. But I have no other projects and the two new ones I’m getting won’t start until next week at the earliest.

I ping Stimpy and check on those project allocations, that I AM getting them and just HOW big they are. Stimpy tells me that one of the remaining two projects has just been cancelled. The other might amount to 10 hours a month.

F#*k.

I’m headed for Smiler when I find out that Smiler is out of the office and won’t be back for a week or so.

Double. F#*k.

I ping my staffing company and tell them Smiler will be out. Partly so they don’t waste their time leaving a message, but mostly so they are reminded that they need to get back to me.

My account rep replies at the end of the day with “I’ll reach out to Smiled[sic] upon their return. I’ll keep you in the loop!”

I about lose it.

“Do so with all speed. At the end of this week I will need to enter hours I don’t have allocations for.”

The next day my team has a review of the work we’ve completed. At the end of it, an all-star developer, who I’ll call Lion, announces they are leaving CorpWorld to take another job. They’ve been with the company for years and years, but they are punching out. It’s a huge loss to the project team. Lion is perhaps the best person I’ve ever met at distilling complex technical issues into understandable language. They have been a pillar of our development effort. And they are leaving.

The other developers nod grimly and say “What took you so long?” Gallows humor is the hallmark of the coding set. i.e. “You are highly respected, therefore why are you wasting your life on this company?”

And the rest of the meeting devolves into “what are we supposed to do now that we have less hours?”

Because everyone seems to be in the same predicament. My allocation is actually one of the higher ones. I get 18 hours a week, some people are getting 2 – or none. Ace has almost 30, but they will still be short at the end of the week. Resource managers have clearly dropped the ball here. Unless…surely we can’t all be destined for the chopping block…?

The team rumbles back to their desks, equal parts defiance and dread.

Seriously, this group is a killer team – surely there is work for them, for us. For me.

I resolve to continue working on the follow up tasks I’ve been given until more project work shows up. I’ll bill time to what I have and wait for the blowback. I’ve tried to get additional work and my manager’s disappeared. I could go to their backup, but they will only tell me to wait until Smiler gets back.

And my staffing company finally contacts me, offers to take me to lunch.

I meet them in a place that better suited for discussion than food and we get down to business. My nerves are a mess – I’ve been whipsawed through a range of futures and I need them to tell me they will be a plan B. Actually a plan C, since I haven’t told them about the other job opportunity.

They assure me that they have my back – if the worst should happen, they will find something for me. They will speak to CorpWorld and see what project work is available for me.

I’m so relieved I almost forget this is the company that has given me a single raise in seven years. Yet I am grateful. Somebody wants to help me out.