“Technically I'm supposed to take your badge right now” 🪪

Fuel from Mary Carns and Halftank Studio

The small rituals of getting laid off, and why we never talk about them.

My boss Phil came in to meet me late one afternoon, wearing a University of Wisconsin Badgers sweater, to tell me I was being let go, and that he was being demoted.

Technically I'm supposed to take your badge and computer right now," he said, "but I'm going to tell them that I talked to you tomorrow instead, so you can say goodbye to everyone, because this really sucks."
​

It was January 2019. I was about to turn fifty, and I was living through my third layoff in eighteen months.

've been through this process so many times that I've developed a poker face for when the inevitable bad news comes. At a previous layoff — a small education startup, six months earlier — my boss actually said to me, "I don't understand how you are so calm right now." He was more upset than I was. It was his first time laying someone off. It was nowhere near my first time being laid off.
​

That's the thing about layoffs: there are rituals to them. Giving your badge back, then the escorted exit, what I call the corporate perp walk. That sudden shift in your boss's tone in the days before, the one you can feel but can't prove. I’d notice that my bosses would avoid me, wouldn’t talk to me, not even look at me.

I learned to sense what was coming. I once drove out of my neighborhood on my way to work and realized I'd forgotten the glasses I need to drive safely. My hyperawareness taught me to sense impending doom.

With every layoff you get a “prize” folder that includes some separation documents, prepared by a lawyer, along with information about continuing your healthcare “benefits” by paying insane monthly amounts for them through COBRA. When I first had to review separation documents, it would upset me greatly. I learned, over time, to read them with less emotion, more like a lawyer. Reviewing them became perversely amusing to me by the end. When it came to identifying severance amounts, there was usually some kind of language about how good the settlement was, and, sometimes, that they weren’t even obligated to provide a severance. I saw it was them trying to make themselves feel better about firing people by giving me an award for putting up with their nonsense for so long.

---

On my last “bonus” day back in 2019, Phil's kindness bought me one more lunch walk in the office park. It was raining hard. I went anyway, looking for the heron who used the park's pond as his personal fishing hole. I called him Sneaky Pete, because I'd once watched him hide in a clump of lotus plants and slowly reveal himself like he was emerging from behind a stage curtain. He was the only one anywhere on the company premises who benefited from hiding.

I couldn't find him. The puddles were so deep that the heel came off one of my boots and got stuck in the mud. I shoved it back on and went inside to say goodbye to all my new friends.

Here's why I'm telling you this: layoffs are framed in terms of shame, as if getting laid off means you should erase it from your work history for life. We tell these stories the way people talk about overcoming an addiction — as if they were our habits to break. But are they? Or does the system that employs us need breaking instead?

Hiding history doesn't serve people well. That's a lesson I learned from a heron.

Have you been through your own perp walk? Hit reply and tell me about it — I read everything.

In other news, I’ve been putting final touches on the book text, when it’s available for pre-order, you’ll be first to know.

-Mary

This newsletter is drawn from Bad Fit, my memoir-in-progress about being a creative professional in environments that weren't built for creative professionals.

If someone forwarded this to you: check out my archive and subscribe here.

---