The Awkward Truth About Layoffs (That the Movies Never Show You)
In the movies, a layoff looks like this: a security guard at your desk, a cardboard box, a walk of shame past your coworkers, maybe a door slammed somewhere for dramatic effect. Rude. Crude. Over in ninety seconds of screen time.
That's not what it's like for most of us.
For most of us, there are signs. There's maybe a warning notice. There's a slow build you can feel in your gut weeks before anyone says a word to you. And then there's the actual moment which isn't dramatic at all. It's just deeply, painfully awkward.
Here's mine.
I'd watched our HR team get restructured department by department for months. I knew the pattern. I knew my turn was coming before it came. So when a random instant message showed up asking me to meet with my boss, I didn't panic; I packed up my desk. One small mercy of the pandemic: most of us had already moved our personal items home, so there wasn't much to pack. A water bottle. A phone charger. That was it.
I took the elevator up. I leaned in the doorway before I even sat down and said, sarcastically, "Why do I feel like this isn't going to be a good meeting for me?"
It wasn't. Position eliminated. Team restructuring. The usual language. And honestly? I was ready for it. I was ready to walk out and start processing the strange, unexpected freedom of it. The chance to actually stop and ask myself what I wanted next.
Then they asked a question I wasn’t prepared for: "Is there anything on your computer you'd like to send to yourself?"
Well, shit. This just got awkward.
We'd just bought a new house. I'd been using the office scanner for months because it was right there and convenient, scanning closing documents, inspections, all of it, straight to my work computer. Had I deleted any of that? No. Was I confident I'd already emailed myself copies? Also no.
So there I was, mass-emailing home-buying documents to my personal email, in real time, while HR sat across the desk and waited. Politely. Silently. While I frantically clicked "send" over and over.
That is a very specific kind of awkward. And it's one of about a dozen things I wish I'd thought about before the meeting instead of during it.
This is the part nobody prepares you for. Not the emotional part - people talk about that, somewhat. It's the logistical, unglamorous, mildly humiliating part: the personal files still sitting on a work laptop, the passwords saved in a work browser, the printer scans of documents you didn't back up anywhere else. You don't think about any of it until you're sitting in the chair, and by then it's too late to do it calmly.
🐝A beehive doesn't wait for winter to start storing honey. It prepares while there's still time, not in a panic, before scarcity forces the issue. That's really what this comes down to: doing the boring, practical prep work before you're the one being asked what's on your computer.
Recovery, Reflection, Redesign are the steps in The Reset Framework which I built this business around. It usually starts with Recovery: protecting your routine, your energy, your sense of control after a layoff. But there's a version of Recovery that happens before the layoff too. Having your documents backed up. Knowing your accounts. Not needing to mass-email yourself while someone waits.
That's exactly what I'm walking through in the free webinar I'm hosting on August 26th at 6:30pm CT: "The Layoff Proof Checklist: What to Do Before the Pink Slip." It's the checklist I wish someone had handed me before that meeting, so you don't have to improvise your way through the most awkward five minutes of your professional life.
Looking to register for “The Layoff Proof Checklist: What to Do Before the Pink Slip” - join here.
