I’ll just start this from the beginning because what happened a few hours ago sums up everything about corporate culture, the cog in the machine and a whole bunch of other things I have been talking about for months.

Little did I realize it has been just under a year since I lost my job. In a few days it will be exactly one year. When I was let go (such a stupid euphemism, so let’s be real) when I was fired I kind of knew what to expect from people considered friends from my job. Just like in the Ten Commandments when Moses was brought before Pharaoh before being cast out in the wilderness, I knew my name would be stricken from the records, never to be spoken about again except in hush whispers. I was a reminder of failure against the corporate machine and the harsh penalty of failure. That thought pattern couldn’t be cultivated in the corporate structure. The corporation had to be both mother and father to the workers.

I had what I thought was a good friend who worked there. Before I was fired, he talked about how working at the job was the best place he had ever been. Since he was within shouting distance of retirement age, around 57, he figured he would end his working career at the job. He loved the benefits and the money, and while he did voice some concerns about treatment, he knew what side his bread was buttered on.
He wasn’t a salary man but he was someone who knew with his age it he was in that spot where he couldn’t really retire but finding a new job at his age would be next to impossible. Keeping his head down and producing for the company would be his ticket to finish out his time.

When I was fired I heard from him probably three times, all within the first month. The first conversation was the typical sympathy call with promises to keep in contact, but as time went on it was clear that to keep up his focus he had to distance himself from things that would remind him of the penalty of not following the strict rules of the corporate structure. I had seen it before. When I was at the job I had seen my share of people who lost their jobs. They were cogs and when it was time for them to go they were asked off the floor, lead away as if they were going to have a nice little conversation about something. The supervisor would return, not mentioning a thing. It would be hours before anyone would notice the person was gone, and if anything was said it would be a simple they were gone but the details couldn’t be discussed.

No one questioned because in our heads we would fill in the blanks that they did something wrong. We didn’t want that taint on us. I knew of two guys who were close friends at the job. They would hang out together; their families would have cookouts together. They even had the beginnings of a small business being started up. When one was fired, that partnership and friendship ended in less than three months.

After I hadn’t heard from my former coworkers after a month or so, and let’s be clear of the fifteen I worked with closely only three bothered to call me initially and then the one person who called me a total of three times, I also cast them aside. There was no way I could alter their thinking and I was sure if this was the way they wanted things to go I wasn’t going to spend my time trying to unscramble their heads on corporate thinking.

Last week sometime I got a call from the guy who was going to retire with the company. I saw the message on my phone but I was so busy, and to be honest it had been so long I wasn’t all that curious to know why he called, that I put it aside thinking I would get to it later. Yesterday I saw he called again and I got distracted and didn’t check the messages. Today, because of a number I didn’t recognize, I decided to check my voicemail.

When I heard his voice it was very quiet and humble, not the gun ho jovial voice he normally had. It was the voice I heard when he talked to me the day I was fired. In the message he said he was fired.

I can’t lie. When I heard he was fired I was kind of happy. I hadn’t heard from him in over nine months, I was persona non grata and now that he was cast out from the temple he was calling me for sympathy. It felt like vindication because here was someone with his big plan, a person who was so willing to be part of the corporate think he sold his soul for the promise of being taken care of when he got old and now he was cast out without a second thought. Like me he had very few ‘friends’ outside work so his calling me was probably because he had no one else to turn to. It was so satisfying for me to know he turned to me and that I would be able to turn my back on him.

Yes I know it wasn’t the greatest way to think about things, but I had been through my own struggles in the months where I had no one to talk to. Yes I thought about how this man was going to struggle more than I did because I didn’t see a way where he could get a job. Then it hit me like a cold slap in the face. He probably figured I would have a job by now and possibly he was calling me about getting a job. That got me angry. I had talked to him so much about feeling used by so many people. I had told him how I hated how people took me for granted. When times were good I would hear nothing from some of them but when times were bad, all of a sudden I would get calls from them, essentially looking for emotional, spiritual or financial aid. When I was down and out they were dust.

Many of those ‘friends’ have been cast out, so getting a call from someone I hadn’t heard from in months telling me they had been fired made me think the only reason for the call was for a handout.

It’s been a few hours and I don’t know exactly how I’m going to handle this. I won’t talk about the conclusion in Chaotic Fringe. I will say that his firing just reinforces how cold the corporate structure can be. It reminded me of Robert Jones, a man who worked at another job I had decades ago who was a loyal employee who was close to retirement and died while on vacation. The company had to be shamed by myself and a few others to spend a few pennies to get his family a sympathy card. The corporation ultimately doesn’t care about the worker, no matter how many perks and bonuses they throw at someone. We are replaceable parts.