So. As I Was Saying....

So, yeah. I got RIF'd.

All-in-all, it was a very well done thing, inasmuch as one never seems to enjoy the efforts everyone puts into an enterprise such as this.

I'd come to work that morning fat, dumb and happy, secure in the knowledge that my boss had told me we didn't expect any layoffs in the current year, just maybe a little less travel, a few fewer computer upgrades and maybe not quite so much software. Okay, fine. I could live with that. Apple was on campus that day, giving a dog-and-pony show about the iPad and how it figured into the modern classroom. I figured I'd pack mine along and attend.

So there I was, listening to the Apple guys talk about how far and wide the iPad had spread in the education market, and how we were going to learn a whole bunch of new and interesting ways to use them in the years ahead, when I noticed out of the corner of my eye, my boss's boss was standing in the doorway. She waved. I waved and nodded. I went back to hearing about iPads in the classroom. A moment or so later, I looked back and she was still there, only this time she was gesturing kind of emphatically. It's about twenty minutes to 10:00am, now. I pointed at myself and she nodded and signaled she wanted me to come to the door. And so, I did.

She told me that her boss wanted to see me this morning. And not at my desk, or in his office, but right next door. And not at 11:00am or 11:30, but at 10:15am. You know me well enough to know my first question was "Okay, but what's this all about?"

"I think you'd better hear it from him" was her reply.

I let out an audible groan and she reached out and squeezed my elbow a little and said, "You'll be alright" but she turned away right away and left. After fifteen years, you can kind of get a read on people, you know? I could feel my face flush, and my ears filled with a high pitched whine like standing on the airport flight line next to a jet, or being in the next room while someone runs the vacuum cleaner next door. I texted my wife, "Honey, I'm going to be fired in twenty-three minutes" and made my way back to my seat at the Apple presentation.

She was great, she really was. Very supportive. At the appointed time, I gathered up my stuff and went next door. And there, on entering, was the CIO and the department HR person, both looking grim. I took the seat in front of them at the table. "As you know, the economy hasn't been doing well, lately. The rest was like Charlie Brown's teacher, really. "Wha-whaaah wha-whaah-waaah". Sign here, and here, and here. We stood and shook hands again, and I was led into the next room, where the University HR guy was ready with the "So, You've Been Fired" packet of valuable resources. Answers to questions about insurance and unused vacation and all of the rest, plus a page on an upcoming "So, You've Been Fired" seminar I'd be sure to want to attend. He led me across the hall to another University HR person who explained I was to go straight home, now, and not back to my desk. I was to make arrangements with my boss to come in and get my stuff after hours. I called my wife and she met me out in front of the union and drove me home. We'd worried, talked, planned and joked about this day off and on for a dozen years. It was finally here.

I did a lot of crying. It was frustrating. I thought I had done everything right. My boss's boss, the woman who signaled me to come to hear about the appointment, cannot name three things in fifteen years that I didn't volunteer for. Whenever she needed someone, I was there. New students need to have buildings pointed out to them? I was there. The computer store was having a big sale and needed to get a bunch of stuff to the Union? I was there. We need a second voice for an Abbott and Costello Who's On First? skit about the Windows Start button? I was there. I was also there for her whenever I thought it was important that she be in the loop. I finished a task and checked my home page to find a story about "a light plane" that had crashed into the World Trade Center. I refreshed the screen, only to find the story replaced with one that said two planes had crashed into the towers and I thought to myself, "You know? If I was the boss, I'd want to know about something like this." So, I got up and walked to her office and told her, "The nation is under attack. Go to CNN.com".

Some years later, her boss was killed in an auto accident on a snowy morning on his way to work. We had a big meeting with the staff to discuss the ramifications of this and then we were excused, while she dealt with her managers. She started, as we filed out, saying that no decision had yet been made on who would fill in, in the interim. It might be her, it might be one of a few others. When I got back upstairs, I got the official e-mail announcing the interim replacement, and knowing she hadn't seen it, and knowing she was in a room full of managers who needed details, I printed off a copy and walked it back down stairs to the meeting room and handed it to her.

I was always doing stuff like that. When I'd happen upon a kid staring blankly at a sheet of paper and holding it up to a building and turning around and looking over his shoulder for another building, I'd walk up and ask, "How lost are you?" We'd usually have a pretty good laugh and I could figure out which "Hall" he needed and send him on his way. Did that with parents, too, from out of town, driving slowly down an otherwise busy street. I tried to learn the names of everyone in our building, if not everyone in our department. I learned their names, and a little about them, by the dozens. When new people were hired, I walked them around introduced them around because I knew everybody.

The Internet and the Web weren't going anywhere. And we were in the middle of a push to change the way we did all of our Web pages, and I made sure I was the guy who taught everyone how to do that. I'd been the one who taught them HTML, CSS, Dreamweaver and the Templates, and I would be the one to guide them through the wilderness to the CMS promised land. But I would not get there with them. I was sad, I was frustrated, I was angry. I went through all of the Kubler-Ross Stages of Grief. There's no way this includes me-it has to be a mistake. Those fuggers! Hey-maybe they'd let me come back half-time, or work as a contract employee? I'll never find a job as good as that one, again. And finally I started looking for work.