Getting laid off wasn’t the worst thing that could’ve happened to me.
Honestly, I didn’t want to be at my job anymore. It was boring, I really had no work to do, and it was showing through the cracks. You can only pretend to work for so long before someone picks up on it. The worst part is, when they do pick up on the fact that you really are just sitting on your hands, the workplace becomes a hostile environment, and you’re frowned upon because you’re “not pulling your weight.”
Well, what weight is there for me to pull… When there’s no work to really do?
I tried to remedy my situation before getting laid off, by asking one of the senior management members if there was any extra work I could pick up, in any department. His response was that since work was slow, and there were no sales coming in (nothing to do with the fact that the company doesn’t actually have a sales rep, I promise), there was a lack of work all around.
I tried a different tactic near the end of April, suggesting that I only work three days a week, as opposed to five days a week. Since I was going back to school anyway, I didn’t see this as a problem, and they quickly agreed to it. My last day was supposed to be June 30th 2009.
My last day was actually May 5th 2009. I was upset because I knew that I was the extra limb that the company didn’t really need, and I’d tried different ways to remedy it without much success. Turns out, being laid off a week before Election Day worked to my advantage.
I now had time to work on several web projects I was sitting on. Most importantly, I needed to get the Vancouver Short Film Festival website up and running to full capacity, and I also had to get my own blog up and running. The layoff also allowed me to take on more web projects, though I’ve not actually heard back from my clients yet.
Overall, I’m optimistic about the future – even though it will be financially constrained. The tools my good friend Norman Tan provided me with back in April will also help me tremendously.
