You’ve found another job. That’s wonderful. You’re excited and delighted at the chance to finally move on from that dead-end labor camp you’ve been going to everyday for the last who knows how long. Your boss is an idiot. The people you work with are a bunch of donkeys, and this one guy you’re pretty sure is a sex offender.
What’s your next step? Well to put in your two-week notice, right? This is, of course, the standard operating practice of thousands of people everyday who have decided to leave their jobs. You wouldn’t want your employer to frown upon you in the now twilight of your career with them, would you? Whoa there fella, stop right there! What are you doing???
Let’s consider an alternative situation, shall we?
The company, for which you work, is a dive of ghastly business practices, lousy management, and poor customer service, has decided they are no longer in need of your services. It seems, their bad business practices throughout the past several months or years, something of which you carry no fault for what-so-ever, has left their bottom line spoiled. An assortment of maladroitly supervised salesman, engineers, and other company brass has let golf outings and three hour lunches get in the way of their jobs.
Now you must go.
You see, for the past two weeks, without warning to you, your boss, along with a collection of other higher-ups have quietly and surreptitiously planning your demise. They have listed ads in the paper, internet, and craigslist, which have prompted several replies. The said interested are willing to work at lesser wages and benefits, and have already come to interview. Of these interview-ees, your smiling boss has chosen one in which to replace you. Your livelihood now sits in limbo. Your wife, your kids, and your home, all lie in complete turmoil. And yet, you are humbly unaware of the life altering, possibly life shattering, events that are to take place in the near future. Everyday, your boss strolls past you and gives you a friendly smile. Work seems slow, so you ask fi you might have anything to worry about, you are thinking of buying your lovely wife something real nice for Valentines Day, and you’re just checking. Your boss puts his hand on your shoulders and looks you square in the eye and with a re-assuring tone, declares, you have nothing to worry about, that you are an asset, that your position is unique and with a wink, and a smile you feel assured.
The next day at work, you arrive to find your boss has taken the day off. You clock in and take a few steps and a senior management type greets you. You’ve seen him at work, but this is the first time, and last time you will exchange words. He is carrying a large white folder, and regretfully announces that there have been some cuts, and you have been chosen to make the sacrificial blood letting. Your gift upon the alter is necessary for the survival of the company, and in a half-backward spin of words, he thanks you for your duty and you are hastily turned around and escorted to the door. You are not given a chance to collect your personal effects, but rather informed that you will need to make an appointment in the coming days to come in and gather your belongings. As quickly as it began, it is now over. In the span of only about one minute, you are now standing, hat in hand, in the parking lot of your former place of employment. Disbelief turns to anger as you drive home. How could they? What are they going to do now? You begin to laugh and wild scenarios play out in your head.
” Boy, they sure are screwed. Who’s going to perform your day to day duties?”, you chuckle slightly.
But you see, my dear friend, the company has had weeks to prepare themselves for this. They informed you of your demise, only after every “t” was crossed and every “i” was dotted. They had all their cards in line. The transition will be very smooth. Your replacement will begin Monday and with-in a couple of weeks, you will be forgotten. You will be nothing more than a distant memory, and then, no one will remember you at all.
Meanwhile, your life will be turned upside down. Your in your late thirties, early forties, finances were always an issue at home, and posed the only real strife between you and your wife, but now will consume and strain your marriage like never before. Your kid’s college fund will be raided to pay the mortgage. Your wife will take up a second job, while you search the want ads, which have shrunk to a sliver over the past year. You sell your two year old car for about four thousand under its blue book value, and buy your brother-in-law’s old beater he keeps around for a winter car. It’s all good though, because he happens to know a guy who is the foreman at the ball bearing factory, and as luck would have it, they are hiring. You get a job testing assembled bearings, and convince yourself that it’s no big deal because it’s just temporary, until you can find something more suiting. Meanwhile, the rest of the economy has slowed down and lay-offs have flooded the job searching market with thousands of individuals like you that will work anywhere. So you hold out. You search here and there, high and low, but nothing. Your new job is an hours drive from home and the company is in an economic slow down of its own, so they have you working ten to twelve hour shifts to cover for the people they’ve laid off. The whole situation really hampers your interviewing time. Meanwhile at home, your wife has secretly been talking to her sister who recently went through a divorce and has the name of her attorney, who more than anyone has convinced her that she is a victim of your shortcomings and is far better off without you. You get served your divorce papers on a Friday right before you get off work, and stay at your brother’s who lives an hour and half from your new job, that isn’t so new anymore because you been there a great unwanted year all ready. Your wife starts seeing a new guy about a month after she files, because she’s all ready wasted enough time with you, and wants to get on with her life. You cant figure out what she sees in him, because he makes less than you do at the bearing factory, but it doesn’t matter much because they have your 401k and twenty-five percent of your gross income in child-support, and ten percent of the rest in alimony to live off of. Your ex quits her job; I mean you’re doing enough work for the both of you anyway. With the extra burden, you decide to pick up some extra hours at the gas station on the way between work and your brother’s house that, he just informed you, is up for sale. Your brother sells his house in May, and tells you the new owners are moving in, in a month. You start looking for places near your works, mentally concreting the fact that you might be a bearing tester and gas station attendant for sometime.
Meanwhile, you’ve picked up some extra hours at the gas station, because all the apartments you can afford now are filled with illegal immigrants and recently released child molesters. You move into your new place and are thrilled because now you’re only ten minutes from either one of your jobs, which allows you to pick up even more hours at both. Its wonderful because you get your kids once a month, but are afraid to let them visit you at home because of the creepy guy who lives right next to you, so you settle for meeting them somewhere in the middle. They call you Duane now instead of dad and you find out you really have nothing in common anymore, and the visits become less, and less eventful. Late one night you’re pulling a double at the gas station, its your weekend to watch the ex-wife’s kids, because she’s with her boyfriend in Puerto Rico for a month, and you’ve stashed them at your mother’s house while you work the graveyard shift. Just after three o’clock a guy walks in and asks for a pack of Marb lights in a box, but you can barley understand him through his thick foriegn accent, but that doesn’t matter, because that’s not what he’s in there for anyway, which becomes rather evident when he pulls out a bat and clubs you in the head. As you’re laying now on the filthy floor of a quick mart working your day off, the assailant swings twice more for good measure as he steals the forty-two dollars out of the register, and flees off into the night. You don’t know it now, because your in a coma, but others can rest assure because the robber was caught a few miles down the road. He gets shipped back to Mexico and crosses the border again three months later just about the time you’re coming out of your coma. The late night beating leaves you drooling uncontrollably from your left side and a wicked bad eye twitch. You’ll need to wear corrective lenses for the rest of your life and piss in a bag, but you’re alive.
Your recent mis-hap has left you unable to work, but now you get to spend the remainder of your days watching “I Love Lucy” re-runs at the under budgeted government homeless shelter.
Which brings us back to our original piece.
Don’t ever put in a two weeks notice. They don’t give you a two weeks notice before they put you in a homeless shelter do they?
