Season 3 Episode 21 - Hollow Pursuits

“Thank you for coming to today’s company all-call. The agenda for this meeting is fake. Effective immediately half of all editorial employees have been terminated. Please log out of this Zoom and wait for an email confirming your new employment status.”

This information was shocking enough for me to actually turn on my camera. I waited long enough to be one of the last to leave, my angry eyebrows the only consequence our so-called leaders would face for their lies and abuse. (Yes, abuse. Layoffs are violence.)

Those of us who had been spared were shortly ordered into another meeting where the VP would field questions about the recent shakeup. Similar to a Donald Trump cabinet meeting, the purpose of this call was actually for the remaining employees to express gratitude for still being employed, swearing fealty to our wilted, delirious leader. Between meetings I’d distilled my feelings down to two questions and, with no such gratitude in my heart, I raised my hand to ask them both.

“After the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of this afternoon’s layoffs, what steps will management be taking to address the editorial department’s complete lack of morale?”

“I’m here to answer questions about new workflows and responsibilities,” the VP said. “Not to engage in emotion.”

“Ok, so management is doing nothing. My second question is this: you’ve asked us to make sacrifices for the good of the company, what sacrifices are the leadership team making to ensure layoffs like this don’t happen again?”

“Sam, you seem to be coming to this from a place of emotion, and I’m not going to engage,” she said again.

“Another ‘nothing.’ Thanks, VP, that’s all I need.”

The next week, my overly emotional questioning landed me in a meeting with the VP, my manager, and an HR employee whose speech was so anxious and halting it seemed to me like someone off-camera was pointing a gun at her. 

The invitation said the meeting would be about “resources” the company would like to offer me during this “stressful period” in my life and to help avoid any more “moments of emotion”. My RSVP was short, sweet, and honest: 

“Respectfully, I decline your invitation. As a disabled adult I am fully capable of advocating for myself, and have no need of any company ‘resources’, since no one here is a mental health professional. The only resource I require is time, and this meeting would waste it.”