Stage 2 of Observing Lay-Offs: Anger

Three days after the lay-offs at my former employer, I'm reliving a few of the reasons why I'd resigned from it in the first place.

The first night afterward I had trouble going to sleep, thoughts racing, and then woke up at 5:30 a.m. I listened to an audiobook for a while and then was able to rest again.

The next day, intense irritation and anger on behalf of my family and friends took hold. I didn't find myself squinting whenever I thought of the lay-offs as on the day before, but the impulse to take out my boxing gloves and pads and take a few whacks to relieve my feelings grew.

Fortunately at least I was able to see more of Gi. and T., since their garden leave had begun. Like most other colleagues, they were busy taking care of signing and submitting the firing paperwork to the company; then the paperwork for the federal German job agency (Agentur für Arbeit) began.

I thought back longingly to the relaxing journalistic routine I've established over the past month, including a larger article that I've been working on and that I'm proud about so far. But to be honest I think I'll need to give myself very flexible working hours until Thursday. The laid-off colleagues and friends and family have been organizing what they need for themselves efficiently, and my sage advice based on my own Agentur für Arbeit experiences was limited. So I've considered myself more or less merely on standby to help if needed.

But I've found myself mindlessly snacking throughout the day, tensely strung, and nervous. And now I'm finding myself thinking of getting therapy again, endlessly listing coping mechanisms to myself that might make me feel more balanced and relaxed, and thinking that I'd better cut out the sugar because that will worsen my anxiety and general state of wellbeing. In other words, changing my entire lifestyle to cope.

What's more, I'm sick of asking other people to manage my feelings for me, including my younger brothers who've seen my crankier side again. I'm worried again about not treating people fairly because I'm so stressed, constantly beleaguered by moral qualms and doubts.

And it feels highly inappropriate to ask for help or sympathy, when 1. my own departure from the company was long ago and it was something I'd arranged on my own schedule, and 2. others are worrying about supporting children, arranging visas, etc.

I keep on reflecting that the upper levels of the company are not full of evil people.

Nonetheless, the company took skilled colleagues from all over the world, with a healthy social working culture and a sense of purpose in their work, a highly prestigious client list, and a regular profit. They turned all of these assets into a massively incompetent and ill-conceived blimp of a project that was such a profitless money sink that I at least couldn't really blame them for shutting it down. (But they should have reassigned the employees.) The leaders, in short, were plain stupid and uninformed.

That almost every single colleague has reported that their wellbeing has suffered over the past months or years is also telling.

And I keep on reflecting that I'd resigned from this f***ing company precisely so that I would never have to feel this degree of emotional ill-health again. I sacrificed my financial security, my ability to guarantee my family financial security, and my fear of never proving myself professionally again, to make it happen. I also sacrificed many regular social contacts in the workplace and have therefore often been tremendously lonely since April, to be honest. And yet I'm temporarily back where I was six to eight months ago.

As my father would say, when a piece of technology drove him past the boundaries of his endurance: damn it all to hell.