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Self-sufficiency

 I am mad as hell. I’m doing 75mph going down 95 and I’m so angry I am huffing.  The people I am passing are surely looking at me like I am a mad woman because I am cursing and crying and talking to myself.

 “No they didn’t just lay me off,” I scream.

 Tears are streaming down my face as I weave in and out of traffic trying to get home as quickly as possible.  I need time to let this soak in and I need to be alone so I could do so. 

 What am I going to tell my kids?  This news is especially distressing to me because I am the sole provider for my family.  What the hell am I going to do now?

 I hit replay in my mind to go back over my day. 

                 It started out just like any other day.  I had dropped my kids off at school.  Got to work about 8:00 and had spent most of my day processing payroll and tying up lose ends.  My co-workers and I had spent time throughout day chitchatting and doing our various duties.  Nothing out of  the ordinary about this day.  Business as usual.  At around 3:30, my boss came over to me and asked if I could come into her office for a minute.  Oh Lord, I thought.  What now?  I hadn’t come back from lunch late.  I hadn’t been on the phone unnecessarily.   I couldn’t imagine what she wanted to talk to me about.  But my stomach was tightening.  I had that feeling.  An uneasiness that washed over me the moment I sat down in the chair in her office.   

              “There is no easy way to tell you this,” she began.  “We have to release you.”

 I sat stunned and speechless for the duration of the lengthy explanation.  What did she just say?  I think back now and part of me probably deliberately tuned the majority of her speech out.   But I did hear words like “downsizing” and “we really hate to see you go.”  Just like that my routine was interrupted and a monkey wrench was thrown into my whole program.

 I was numb going back to the desk that wouldn’t even be mine anymore.  I collected my personal items:  photos, a plaque from my kids, my tennis shoes, and some other odds and ends.  Amazingly, all my personal effects fit neatly into one small brown box.  I was kicking myself all the way to the car for not cutting the fool up in there.  How dare they lay me off!  Why, wasn’t it just the week before in a staff meeting that I was told not to worry about my position?  Didn’t they tell me there was growth potential? “As the needs of the business change, so will your position,” they had said. Yeah, but they failed to reveal that the position it would change to would be “non-existent.”  I threw the box in the trunk, and slammed it closed.  Ain’t that a blip?  There really is no such thing as job security.

That was nearly a month ago and I am still mad as hell.  I looked in my trunk over the Memorial Day weekend and noticed the small brown box.  The photos, the plaque from my kids for Mother’s Day.  All neatly tucked away.  The same way I had tucked away the incident.  I have spent the past month hitting the grind.  Trying to remain optimistic and following leads from close friends and associates.  But looking on the bright side is hard to do when you’re lying face up on the ground because the rug has pulled from under you.  However, when you are down, the only way to look is up.  Ultimately, I know that when one door closes, another opens.   This whole incident further proves what I already knew to be true for myself.  I need to have my own business.  I can’t keep running to these pimp services, making them rich and the companies I am pimped out to even richer.  These companies know exactly what they are doing because they get all the work out of you that they can.  Then, once you cease being useful by their standards, they let you go.  A casualty of war. 

I remember the look on my boss’ face after she finished telling me I was released.  It was almost as if she wanted or expected me to clown.  She sat there scanning my face for some kind of reaction, but I gave her none. I said nothing, because there was nothing to say.   I can smile now at the fact that I didn’t allow myself to be removed from my element.  I am a lady first and foremost and I am glad that I fought the urge to vent my frustrations verbally.  I took it in stride and left there with my dignity.  Shaken, but not stirred.  

           Ya feel me?

                                                                          by Bridgette Hogan
                                                                                       Ya feel me?  

        Email her if you would like to respond to this subject at: soulflower@blacksonville.com

Bridgette is a contributing writer of Blacksonville.com