The Art of the Dramatic Exit

So this week at work turned out to be an interesting one. It was a week filled with drama, intrigue and of course a little bit of humour.

At lunch time on Wednesday everyone in our department was summoned for an emergency meeting. Since “emergency” meetings are not a regular occurrence I was naturally a bit suspicious as to the agenda of this meeting. At high noon the ten of us shuffle into our tiny conference room which was designed to seat about five comfortably. I got there a couple of minutes early so I was fortunate to not have to sit on somebody’s lap. As we settle in, our boss looks around and asks “So is this everybody?” We all look around and realize that one person is missing. A few of us pipe up and say “Oh wait, John’s not here yet.” As it turns out John wasn’t going to make it after all. In fact, at that very moment John was being escorted out of his office and forced into early retirement. So as our boss tells us the news of John’s early departure and the impending organizational shuffle that will ensue we are all quite surprised. I mean John was not the most incompetent person I’ve worked with. In fact he’s not actually the most incompetent person in our department. He was also the person in the department with the most seniority in the company. This obviously doesn’t carry much weight but was still an interesting fact. Our boss explained that John was just “not a good fit” with the organization. Why it took them twenty years to figure that out I’m still not sure of. As he's breaking the news to us my first thought went back to a Fortune magazine cover story that came out about a year ago entitled "Fifty and Fired". It chronicled the growing trend of the aging workforce being forced out of their jobs in favour of younger/cheaper replacements. It was a sobering story and one that really got me thinking about things. Poor John, he was a decent guy, he was hard working and he was somebody's dad. In fact he has two daughters. I couldn't help but think about what that would be like if that were my dad. It's not easy finding a decent job at any age let alone at fifty. I think statistically you have a better chance of getting hit by lightning. And probably after a few years of a fruitless job search that might start looking like a good option. Anyway, I tried to think about the bright side. Because if there's one thing I'm known for it's always looking for the silver lining on life's storm clouds. Since John had been with the company for twenty years he was probably going to get a pretty decent financial package. Plus, if he enjoyed his job even half as much as the rest of us did he'd probably be much happier in the long run? I began looking around the room trying to read people's reactions. Of course there were the people who were only thinking about how inconvenient all of this was for them since they would have to pick up the slack for poor John. Then there were those of us who were desperately trying to read between the lines of what our boss was saying to understand what had lead to John’s hasty removal. Then there was my favourite individual reaction: As our boss is breaking the news to us it was obvious that one of my co-workers was taking the news VERY hard. Her face was red and she was fidgeting in her seat. Then finally a couple of minutes in as our boss continues to talk, she gets up from her seat and heads for the door. I think to myself “Wow, I thought the dramatic exit had gone out of style when Dallas went off the air?” Clearly I was mistaken. Not only does she make her dramatic exit which was complete with the slamming door behind her but she does my favourite version of the dramatic exit. Yeah, that’s the one where you make your exit but in your haste to win the Oscar you forget something behind and have to return to retrieve it. So sure enough within ten seconds she reopens the door and has to come back to get her glasses. What made it especially funny is that we were all crammed into this room like sardines so she had to basically climb over three people to get to her glasses and then climb back over those people to get to the door again. Needless to say although she was able to retrieve her glasses from the room, she did leave a little bit of her dignity behind. I bet our old friend John would have found it funny too. That's if he wasn't being forcibly removed from the premises at the time.