Ten Years After

Today marks the day ten years ago when I was laid off from my job at an e-commerce company. Why would I even bother to remember this? I guess the fact that it happened on the first day of the month makes it somewhat easier to remember without really meaning or trying to. At that point I had been employed there for about two and a half years.

What I mainly remember was that the layoffs (four or five others besides me) came as quite a surprise. We were all under the impression that the company was doing well, and it was, but it was not yet at the point where it was self-sustainable, and after the dot-com bubble burst in the second half of 2000, it was much more difficult for fledgling companies to secure that crucial next round of funding.

Working there was a big deal for me because it was the job that got me out of the hell of retail work where I'd been for the previous decade. There are people who enjoy working in retail and are really good at it, and then there are the rest of us, who ended up there because we couldn't land any other sort of job. In my case it had dragged on way too long, and I was stuck. But my retail employer was one of the first clients of the e-commerce company, and I was chosen to be their point of contact.

I didn't wait long before letting them know, very unambiguously, that I wanted to work for them, and then it happened—they asked me to work for them. I'd never pursued a job that way, and gotten it. At first I worked as a freelancer while I still had the other job, but after a couple of months the other job was eliminated, and a couple of months after that the e-commerce folks offered me a full-time contract position.

I came into things relatively early: the office was still in the basement of the founder's home. When I started I was creating new products in the database and assisting with customer service. But within a few months things were moving along well enough that they needed to hire more people, and in order to do that they had to find a real office. I finally felt like I was where I was supposed to be, doing what I was supposed to do.

Things happened very quickly after that. A year after starting as a contractor, I was hired as a full employee. Later that year we ran out of office space, and my department was sent "offshore" to a temporary space while the company waited for new office space to be completed in a building around the corner. When we finally moved back to the mother ship, we were only there for about three months before the first layoffs happened. The company hung on for one more year before ceasing operations.

I was convinced that I would never again find a comparable job. I now had some relevant experience; I just had to find a situation where it would be useful, and there weren't many of those. After exhausting unemployment, I ended up having to return to retail work, but only for nine months. A placement agency found me a position that seemed like it was made for me. The commute was terrible, but it was a good job, and it paid even better than the other one.

I was at that company for two years. During that time we were sold, and our new owners then merged with another company that ended up being in control and moved our operation to North Carolina. Laid off again, I was forced to return to retail yet again, but this time I was also able to get temporary part-time work through the agency that had placed me at the previous job.

These temp gigs led directly to the job I have today: I was placed here on an indefinite assignment five years ago, which allowed me to quit that final retail job, and seventeen months after that I was hired permanently.

When I look at the ups and downs of my last decade of working life, it almost seems like there was planning and design involved. The truth is that it was far more random, but things do happen for a reason, and I'm certain that had I not been laid off ten years ago, I would not be in this job today. Also, I probably would not have met the Proper Bostonian, who became a good friend.