{"id":885,"date":"2012-12-10T16:26:22","date_gmt":"2012-12-10T21:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/?p=885"},"modified":"2013-12-26T13:39:10","modified_gmt":"2013-12-26T18:39:10","slug":"job-insecurity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wrote-about\/job-insecurity\/","title":{"rendered":"Job Insecurity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

For the month of December I am writing a journal entry each day called Today I Learned<\/em> where I talk about what I learned that day. It could be something like a technical fix at work. It could be something bigger about my life. Earlier this month I was thinking about work and the time I got laid off.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I learned today I am thankful to have a job. I am thankful to be drawing a pay check. I am thankful to have that measure of stability in my life. But I have thought about my quality of life. What kind of life do I want to have? What do I want to get out of my life? How do I want to spend my days?<\/p>\n

I have settled for a lot of jobs. I have settled for jobs. I have settled to sub-par situations. I have worked below my potential and I learned nothing in the process. I have done a lot of things I am not necessarily proud of. But I got a pay check. I had health insurance. I had stability.<\/p>\n

Or so I thought…<\/p>\n

Until the day I got laid off.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was working for the help desk of the City of Richmond, VA. It was my first help desk job. I took the job because it paid more than the position I held. I was happy where I was and I was making pretty good money for grunt work. I was content because the work was easy and I could listen to music in one ear and take calls on the Bluetooth headset on the other ear. I was content there.<\/p>\n

And then I was told I was going to meet with the head of the IT Department there along with my manager. I figured this was not a good sign even though I was working circles around the other help desk tech. So I went to the meeting and I heard the words that still ring in my ears.<\/p>\n

“This has nothing to do with your job performance. You are a great employee who works hard…”<\/strong> and the rest is a blank in my memory. He talked for a few more minutes but the writing was on the wall. The city was going through a round of budget cuts. Because I was the last person hired, I was to be the first person let go.<\/p>\n

Last Hired, First Fired.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was not going to have a job in two weeks. Maybe it was longer. Maybe three weeks. But I was out of a job as of that day. The rest of the time was worthless in a way. I was gone. Deadman Answering Phones.<\/em><\/p>\n

And because one of the desktop support technicians had been hired before me, he was given the choice to take my job<\/em> or lose his own and be laid off too. He opted to take my help desk position. I can’t blame him. I would have made the same choice. But I was expected to teach him what I did. I was expected to train him to take my job. That was just too much for me. I couldn’t do it. My pride was hurt. I was freaking out because I didn’t know what I was going to do next. I was freaking out inside and trying to keep myself together outside. But I was unemployed. And no amount of hard work and effort on my part would change that.<\/p>\n

I was unemployed.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the month of December I am writing a journal entry each day called Today I Learned where I talk about what I learned that day. It could be something like a technical fix at work. It could be something bigger about my life. Earlier this month I was thinking about work and the time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[423,421,422],"class_list":["post-885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrote-about","tag-job-security","tag-thankful","tag-today-i-learned"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=885"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1475,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885\/revisions\/1475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}