A few days ago, my mother was told she was going to be laid off. She’s a receptionist at a medical office. She’s been there for 16 years.
It was out of the blue, and as she sat on my couch in shock and sobbing, and as I sat there in the rare reversed role of comforter, I began to realize what she was most upset about was not how she would pay her bills, though that is big concern, but rather, how hurt she was.
She saw them as her family. New doctors, multiple office managers, ever-changing policies, she had been there through it all—not for the money—but because she cared.
She may not look as important on paper as a doctor or a nurse or a medical assistant, but she knew the name of every patient and drug rep who came through that door.
She wasn’t just a receptionist, she was an advocate.
She was the one who fit you into a jammed schedule when you were too sick to wait, the one who got you the paperwork you needed, the one who got you in with the specialist during the scariest moment of your life, the one who saw you struggling with a newborn baby in a waiting room full of illness and shuffled you into a room, no questions asked.
And she came home that day with the very hard realization that the very people she loved and devoted 16 years of her life to saw her as disposable. It broke her heart.
It got me thinking about my parent’s generation. I come from an honest-to-goodness blue-collar family, my father working for the Ohio Turnpike for over 30 years. Come December, he too, will be laid off, replaced by a machine that takes quarters through a slot over a smile and a hello.
A whole generation of disposable people, loyal to their companies, because that’s what you did. You didn’t bounce from job to job, always looking for something better. You dug in and stayed for the long haul, never mind the demotions, downsizing, pay cuts or loss of pensions.
And then I look at my generation. I don’t have a single friend who is still at the job he or she got after college. Social networking sites like Linkedin make job shopping a breeze, trading our resumes the way our grandmothers traded pie recipes.
Young innovators creating billion-dollar companies from scratch and then walking away from them with lottery-sized pay days.
How foreign it must seem to our parents, to see so many of us jump in and out of careers, relatively unscathed, no emotional investment to cry over, more concerned with meeting overpriced car payments than saying goodbye to the people we spent our days working beside.
When my mother came home that day, tears streaming down her face, choking out the words of her loss, my head was already four steps ahead of her, cold and clinical, planning out her next move.
She wanted no part of that. She wanted to grieve. She couldn’t plan her next move because she never saw herself as anything more than what she’d always been.
The woman at the window asking you about your day and helping you when you were sick.
No one should have to go through that. My good hopes and wishes go out to your mom.
Brittany…I am so sorry…Hug your Mom for me. I also work in this type field as the office manager and have to say I understand how your mom feels. I look in the mirror every morning and wonder how many more wrinkles/pounds my career can handle before the doctor begins thinking about replacing me with a much younger eaiser on the eyes version of myself. I worry more about that company and its finances than I do my own. I am INVESTED because I have raised it from the ground and am proud to say look what I helped do!! The patients call and ask for ME by name. Like your mom I too have a daughter contemplating giving up a career as a Pharm scientist to write – I struggle to understand the generation of Y’s. Hopefully our daughters can learn from our experiences and find some happy medium. At least this mom is praying for you all that when you head over ‘the hill’ there are only happy memories and sunny horizons…Hugs..
Thanks.
The difference between generations is astonishing,and I am only just realizing the gap.
In my head, I want to pick my mom up and launch her into something new and exciting, like I am used to doing, but it’s just not how she works. And it boggles my mind.
When I was in law school I clerked for a firm, gave them my life blood and every waking hour I wasn’t in class. A week before I left to study for the bar exam they told me that they couldn’t offer me a position as an attorney. Hearbroken, I found something else…that lasted precisely two months before I stood, sobbing on a street corner in the worst recession of our time holding a paper bag filled with my various “desk items” (which broke open, and I left every little thing right there on the corner) wondering what on earth I was going to do. I’m on my third job now (please, let me be here a long time) but this article brought back every sick feeling in my stomach from those two earth shattering memories. Hugs.
Poor Mommy! I am so sorry she and your dad are feeling disposable. It is a shame when this happens, and unfortunately it is happening more and more. Hugs to your family as they move through this difficult time.
I work at the Resource centre in town for Employment Ontario. I see people suffering like this every day and it’s heartbreaking. People who have worked for 15-35 years in the same place, which, in a lot of cases they went to right out of high school (or even mid high school, dropping out to work before Gr 12 was a minimum requirement) and hurt and grieving is exactly what they do.
It’s hard. I look at the faces of men and women in their 40′s to 50′s and sometime early 60′s who don’t know who they are without their jobs. I just help where I can and hope that I can be a point of positivity in their most frustrating time.
I loved this post, not because your mother and father are suffering, but because you described exactly the things I see on people’s faces all the time and I don’t think our generation understands it. Thank you for giving them a voice.
This has been such a learning experience for me. Adapting to how I CAN help her as opposed to how I WANT to help her.
And you are right, she is 50. This is NOT the spot she thought she would be in,starting over.
No matter how many times I remind her what opportunity this could bring.
This just breaks my heart. My father-in-law went through something similar recently. He ended up getting a job for a short time with the government (after working tirelessly as the Executive Director of JFS in C-bus & Toledo and forced to resign due to the fact that he showed them how to save money so they figured they could save more money losing him) but due to the change in governor lost that job again and is now jobless. Also, he is 62. Who wants to hire a 62 year old man nowadays when you can get some young guy that will do it for half the price and probably find something better in a couple of years. I hope that both of your parents have better luck and are able to move through this. HUGS to all of you!
Thank you, and that is exactly the thing. They toss out veterans for young people with smaller salaries and cheaper benefits.
What is wrong with our values these days?
I will be 40 this coming year and I have been unemployed now for 19 months!! I’m not a job hopper, nor have I ever had a hard time finding a GREAT job,…until now that is. I was let go because of a new manager who felt intimidated by me. I was the oldest person at our place of employment and 10 years older than she. I had also been at that same location for 8 years, with the next person under me going on 3 years so our customers graviated to ME and not her. Which went over like a ton of bricks! Anyways, due to her insecurities I found myself jobless. (along with being recently divorced at the time, with a baby, because I caught my hubby cheating) Life would really suck right now if it weren’t for the love of my daughter to keep me going!!!!
Best of luck to your Mom.
*gravitated
Good God, I am so sorry you went through all of that, and I will keep my ears open for a job!
I work for a pharmaceutical company that has had four lay offs in five years. During each one I have watched as they have ousted countless employees that have been with the company for 15, 20, 25 years or more.
As an early twenty something at the time just beginning her career this was really morale crushing. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I could put 20 years of my life into this job and then one day they will just toss me out.
Hugs to your mom. I hope she finds something she can be just as passionate about.
That also. If my mom, who committed her life to that business, could be let go, who then is safe?
I have been there and done that twice now, and you nailed it exactly.
My first thought was not about money. It was about the loss of friendships, the shock of realizing you really are disposable, the loss of how you define yourself. Doubt and disbelief. For both jobs, I was loyal, dedicated, my co-workers were my family, and I worked hard to grow each company. You do grieve. I’ve been unemployed now for 14 months and it still eats at me that I was let go. Others were let go at the same time, and it was all employees that had been there for years. Good people. Very painful.
Here’s hoping your mom and all of us that have dealt with this issue can find a new place to finish out our careers with respect.
YES. Everyone deserves respect. It’s exactly that.
I’m so sorry that she feels so heartbroken about it. I’ve been laid off twice, and both times it really hurt my feelings. In my case it wasn’t that I was sad that I had lost the job, but more that I didn’t think they saw my potential professionally. Better things came out of BOTH of those layoffs and it will for your mom as well.
Thank you!
I’m sure your mom doesn’t feel this way right now, but I firmly believe that whenever you put your heart into your work- no matter who you work for- you have made a difference in the world. I know that the patients she helped appreciate what she did for them, and I also know there is something out there that is better for her. Someone who can put that much love into her job will be appreciated somewhere else, I just know it. I wish that we could all be this empathetic and passionate about helping others; maybe we wouldn’t be in this economic mess if we thought a little bit more about our fellow humans. Your mom sounds like a wonderful person, and the office she worked for will be a lesser place without her. There are higher callings for her talents out there…
How awful. I worked for a company for only 2 years and felt awful when I got laid off – like they didn’t care about me at all. I can’t imagine how it feels for your Mom.
Your mom had a passion for her last job, she’ll find it again. Your mom will get through this, something else will come along and she will shine. My mom was a stay at home mom until 42, then she went back to school. She’s a teacher now, and loves it.
I’m coming up on 30 and while I didn’t put 16 years in, my first job out of college was for a start up company and I put a lot of things aside in my life becuase I had to keep my job. A husband working in the volitile railroad industry was being laid off and brought back every 6 months or so. For the 6 years I was there my hubby was laid off for most of it. Then, surprise! Your pregnant. And stuck. Shortly after my baby was born the recession hit hard but I started looking for something differnent anyway. Even with a husband back in school for the 6th time
and a baby to care for. And then, surprise! I was rear ended in 2009, and had to undergo a lot of medical care. I fought tooth and nail against our
company insurance to get the best surgery
possible for someone my age. Then went through the whole settlement thing with the insurance companies and felt relieved even, when I was able to repay my company for most of my medical costs… The insurance was self funded by the company so I always lived in fear thinking that my unintended costs would get me booted out. And no one wants to hire a cripple. A week before surgery they told me I was being let go with several others. That I would be able to get my surgery but after that I would have to pay cobra. That was in May and while I am recovering I am very fearful for what’s next. Do I tell employers that I was disposable and then how do I explain the 6 months without working? Or do I explain that I was somewhat disabled for a period of time and I’m still kinda physically broken and not get a job becuase I could be more expensive? Luckily my husband is finally at a steady job for the first time in 6 years. And I’m thankful for that, but still nervous how I’m going to get myself out of this.
I’m sorry for everything you’re going through Brittany’s Mom. Hopefully all of us who have been labeled disposable will be able to see once again that we are exactly the opposite. Loyal.
I have no doubt in my mind that I would stay at a job longer if I found something that I loved doing, a FOREVER job.
Brittany, I’m so sorry for your mom’s loss. My MIL was laid off 2.5 years ago, and it devastated her. She, too, felt betrayed, though the circumstances were different (she was in a dying industry and knew her day would come–didn’t lessen the blow, though). After a bumpy 2 years, she’s doing very well, but the toll it took on her emotionally was enormous. I wish your mom the very best!!
My mom and dad each went through a version of this. And you said it perfectly. Goodness you are such a talented writer. I read your stuff daily, and take for granted the talent involved when I read your humor, but man I was just SCHOOLED! Well done Brit. Good luck to your mom.
Another terrible outcome of isposable people is if a company tosses out the older people, who do the younger people turn to to getmentoring, help, advice, wisdom? they dont… and as a result as we have seen, the quality of everything has gone down.
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