My Big Mistake at the Big Firm, Part The Last

I did my usual morning routine, getting coffee from the Flavia machine [each floor had at least one—it makes decent coffee and tea in a variety of flavors, although that variety had decreased significantly as a cost-cutting measure,] doing online trainings, reading articles [technical and otherwise,] planning on who to ask next about work, checking e-mail, and random websurfing. I remember that it was around 11 AM or so and I was starting to think about lunch. The phone rang. Uh oh…the display read that it was my “relationship partner” calling me. I knew that this was it.

“De Minimis, could you come see me in my office? Thanks…”

I had been thinking about this day for months, and trying to mentally prepare for it. Everyone from all the other firms who had made cuts said it happened like this. You get a call from a partner to come see them in their office. You get there and see the partner along with an HR person. The partner gives you the bad news, and then the HR person takes over the details. You sign some paperwork, turn in badges, laptops, etc., get your stuff, and leave the building.

Even though I had tried to steel myself for this, it was still a hard thing to see that it was really happening. I had flashbacks to grade school and being called to the principal’s office. I am extremely conflict-avoidant. Although I don’t think I really showed it, I felt like panicking. All of the cool Johnny Paycheck kiss-my-ass stuff you plan on saying goes out the window. I walked down the hall to the fancy Partner Row area. I thought about how this would be the last time I would be in this office where I had spent almost the entire past year. Finally, I reached my Relationship Partner’s office. Yep, there was the HR person.
Thankfully, it was the nicer one. I sat down.

Partners are often in love with the sound of their own voices. I guess it’s because they get paid to tell clients things. There were a couple I knew who were a little more straightforward, but my Relationship Partner wasn’t one of them. This particular fellow tended to turn anything he said into what seemed like a performance or a lecture. I don’t remember most of his spiel that day, just that he said “You’re just not a fit.” “Fit” is one of those words they like to throw around.

He went on to say that they were aware of my request as far as the file review process. “We’re not here to mess up people’s lives.” Apparently several partners and HR people had been having phone conversations over the past day regarding what to do about me, because they generally did not let people go until later in the summer. But they were able to make an exception. The Red Sea parted. This would be my last day [and actually, last few minutes] in the office.

Although I am pretty critical of how the Big Firm did a lot of things during my time there, I have nothing but good things to say about how they handled this. They were paying me around a month’s severance. They were going to sign off on my CPA license saying that I worked a year there even though I technically only worked 51 weeks. Had they not done this I probably would have had to wait for years to get my license, because no accounting job appears to be forthcoming. They were going to pay any outstanding business charges on my corporate card [I’d paid some professional society dues just a couple of weeks before.]

But the best thing they did, was that the HR lady was really nice and respectful. I brought my laptop to her office and formally handed it over to her along with my ID badge. She didn’t summon security the way one of the other HR people had done with other people they had let go. She said, “I’ll stay in the kitchen and you can get all of your things together. Then you can just leave as if you were going to lunch.”

My “cube neighbor,” a young hotshot that my wife and I liked to refer to as “Golden Boy,” worked silently as I did this. I’m pretty sure he knew what was up. I didn’t feel like saying goodbye to him [he was a genuinely nice guy, but the contrast between us was a little hard for me to take on a daily basis—everyone coming over and gabbing with him and putting him on projects while I sat next to him like some kind of pariah, Goofus to his Gallant.] I didn’t want to seek out the friends I had there, for fear that HR would quit being friendly.

I got in the elevator and hit the down button. I called my wife from my car and talked to her about half an hour about what we were going to do next. When I got home, I e-mailed my landlord and a few other people. Incidentally, my “coach” was also being let go later that summer. They were dissolving his practice area.

We moved back to where we are now. We own a house here. The job market is really terrible, but the cost of living is lower and my unemployment checks go farther. I’ve had three interviews over the last eight months. My wife recently had an interview, and the result will probably determine if we are going to stay here.

I think had I worked somewhere else, I probably would still be out of work right now, but would be in a better situation. I had a really bad time personally in the place I’d moved to work for the Big Firm. Ended up getting sued by a scumbag psychotic landlady [there is nothing worse than rich crazy people] and had to cash out my retirement account from my former job to pay a settlement [thankfully much less than she had wanted.] The cost of living in that city was so high that it was impossible for me to save anything and I constantly had to dip into savings in order to make ends meet. When you added it all up, I was essentially spending money in order to work there.

Although I didn’t really get the work experience I needed, I did learn a lot, both good and bad. I met a lot of nice people although I’ve found these days when I try to contact them they usually don’t do much other than add me to their Facebook. I guess I have the stink of failure on me. I get sad and frustrated when I think about going back to school and working hard to get a graduate degree, only to end up in a worse position.