Glibbertysmidgeon

If you’ve been through it as many times as I have, you can feel it coming.

There’s a certain slowdown, a growing loss of momentum. Management is distracted. There’s talk about the long term direction of the team, but there isn’t any work for you to do today. Or there is work, but nobody is asking when you’ll have it done. Maybe the others don’t realize it, but they respond to the mood. There’s time for talk at the water cooler. You’re not the only one who doesn’t have a deadline.

It was a relief today when my boss took me into her cube and asked, “Do you want to know what’s going on?”

December is the killing season. In the last 7 years, I’ve been laid off at Christmas 4 times. I’ve come to look forward to the holiday with equal parts anticipation and dread. Can I buy him that warm coat, or should I be trimming The List instead of the tree?

This year, the news was surprisingly good.
The company has asked all consultants to take a hiatus until the end of the year, starting Monday. We can come back to our jobs in January.

Even better, the hiatus coincides with my trip home for the holidays. The company has simply extended a planned vacation for three extra days. Sadly, some of us weren’t so lucky. 25 consultants packed their things today and said goodbye for good.

Two of them are people I know.

After they left I sat at my desk, editing a document. I was glad to have a hard deadline. But as I sat there, feeling amazed and grateful to have survived another Christmas at my good job, I couldn’t help thinking back on those two goodbye hugs.

They came to work like any other day. By lunchtime they had walked out into the cold with their scarves around their noses, and their futures as open as the windswept streets.