First Casualty of Operation: Let the Healing Begin

Well, I sort of had a feeling this wasn't going to end well. Last week we were all pulled into an office and told that the head of our department (ie. my boss' boss) had just been let go by the company. Truth be told, I wasn't really surprised and quite frankly thought it was about two years overdue. It's not that I like to see anyone lose their job but the guy was clearly in way over his head and something had to be done. The best way to sum up his tenure would be to quote a friend of mine who said after the news broke "Well, I hope things work out for him. Hopefully he finds a job that's more suited to his talents - like one where he doesn't have to make any decisions or manage people." Ah yes, that would be perfect for him.

The other thing I sort of realized during this whole saga was that I think I might have become completely immune to other people's suffering because I felt very little emotion over the whole thing. I tried to think about the fact that he has four kids and he's the sole breadwinner and the fact that he's spent fifteen years with a company that just tossed him to the curb like yesterday's garbage and I honestly couldn't muster anything more than a sense of relief. I know how horrible that sounds but on some level I just really felt like he wasn't happy and that in the end he would probably be happier without the job. Plus, financially I know he was given a very handsome package so he'll definitely land on his feet. Once I made myself feel like less of a monster however, I started wondering if the reason I've become an emotional island in this regard is due to the fact that over the last year and a half I've seen more than a half a dozen people that I've worked fairly closely with lose their jobs? Some of them were harder than others to deal with but the last couple barely fazed me. I've really tried to learn to remove emotions from anything work related since it doesn't really feel worth the investment. It's definitely easier said then done but the truth is I kind of wonder that if I'm able to turn my emotions off in one area of my life then it may automatically transfer to other areas? I'm not quite sure right now but it worries me a bit.

One interesting side note to the whole story was that one of the reasons I wasn't surprised by the announcement was because I had sort of been tipped off ahead of time. You see, I was playing squash with a guy I work with the day before it all went down and afterwards we were talking about things in my department and some of the issues and frustrations I was having. He works in another department at a more senior level to me but works pretty closely with our department. Anyway, after I finished sharing my thoughts he said "Well, I don't want to get myself into any trouble here but I will just say that nature has a way of taking care of these things." I thought to myself, "Nature?? Is there a hurricane headed our way that's going to take out our senior leadership team?" I guess I sort of misunderstood because the human resources department ended up taking care of things in lieu of waiting for an act of God. The other interesting thing was who was named as his successor the next day. That's right - none other than my squash buddy. Things just keep getting curiouser and curiouser...