Tippy-toeing around the inevitable. Not talking. Shhh! Don’t want anyone to know. Holding off. Just keep it quiet. Leave the house each morning as per usual, pretending everything is all right when you know for a fact that everything is all wrong. Don’t tell the kids. Can’t tell my wife. Better not say anything to my husband right now. And I for sure don’t want my friends and neighbors to find out!
Losing a job, whether you are 28, 38, 48, 58 or 68 hurts. For most, it is not fun. For many, it is a painful, unpleasant experience and you know that’s true if you have ever been through it. It is, though, what happens every day of the week across America, and elsewhere around the world. Recently, I met a man who in his entire 30+ years of working had not once experienced losing a job. Until the other day. And that was it…just like that. He got a phone call: “We need you to come up to the office now.” And if you have ever lost a job, you know what comes next. The talk – then the walk. The walk out the door. Thirty years and one box of memories as you are escorted out “the back way.”
And you wind up in some career transition management professional’s office a few days later because you simply don’t know where else to go. You share with her (or him) that you have not yet told your spouse, or your kids, or anyone, for that matter, that you don’t have a job. And the career management professional invites you to practice telling those that need to be told – your immediate family and your closest friends. You role play your “lines” with the stranger and realize that you can find the words to tell your wife, husband, partner, friend, roommate, son or daughter that you lost your job and that you really do want them to know.
In the event you get downsized, right-sized, terminated, dismissed, or fired this afternoon, or this morning, I hope that you will get in touch with those who need to know, sooner than later. I hope that you will readily inform those closest to you that your job was eliminated today. I hope that you will not feel too ashamed, too embarrassed or too proud to tell those who love you the most what happened at your place of work this day. And if you are too ashamed, too embarrassed or too proud to let others know your current occupational status, the world is also full of experienced career management professionals who can help you find the courage to tell.
cross-posted billiesucherblog
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