About 7 months ago, I experienced the most exciting thing to happen to me in my engineering career thus far..... I got fired!
You may say to yourself, "How could such an epic engineer get fired? Was he TOO smart for his own good? Did he extort millions of dollars from the CEO and is now posting from his island fortress or jail cell?"
The answer is... neither. The truth is that I was let go for "financial reasons." I'm not sure how a company can let someone go nearly 3 years after the crazy financial downturn America suffered in 2008 and call it "financial reasons" but whatever. I think it had something to do with the new boss they hired who decided to cleanse our department and replace us with minions from her old company. Seriously, someone has been fired from my old department every 2 months or so since I was let go. Conspiracy much?
So after I had gone back the next day to collect my personal things and experience the most awkward goodbyes ever, I found myself in the state of unemployment. Being unemployed was really awesome for about 2 weeks. I did whatever I wanted. I watched Maury, I went all day without putting on pants, I beat video games I had been putting off, I took naps at 10:30 AM because I was tired from "all that staying awake", and finally I performed my State mandated "3 job related searches a week" in order to keep collecting my unemployment check. After that glorious 2 weeks, however, it got dull really quick.
My significant other makes enough money to constitute her wearing the pants (and belt, shoes, shirt, hat, etc.) in the family, so my income wasn't necessary to keep us going, but it severely cramped out wanna-be-yuppie lifestyle. I had to get work.... not exactly easy in an economy that hasn't quite recovered from the belly-flop it took. After the first couple of weeks I really started buckling down and looking intently for gainful employment. What I found wasn't a job.... but soul crushing disappointment.
I cannot tell you how many resumes I emailed, or how many online applications I filled out, how many "friends in the business" I talked to, but it was basically the equivalent of throwing my information in a giant black hole where nothing can escape. I would submit and application and then.... nothing. Usually not even an acknowledgement that it was received. It's hard to take after a while. I celebrated on the rare occasion that I got a rejection email. At least it was something.
I was unemployed for almost exactly 3 months. During this time period, I probably send emails to or filled out applications for at least a 100 firms in the metroplex in which I live. Of those, I probably actually heard back from around 20, and most of those were automatic responses. And of those, I was only offered employment at 1 - which I immediately jumped on. The job wasn't quite in the same field I had been working in, and I had to take a pay cut, but it is a job. That's all I could ask for.
The one upside of this new job (besides the paycheck, which isn't huge, but maybe big enough to take back the belt or maybe hat from my spouse, but definitely not the pants) is that I have upgraded from a cube to an office. I suspect new shinanigans will ensue from that alone. However, before I was "let go" at my old firm, I HAD upgraded from a interior cube to a cube by a window (seriously... ballin') and now, even though I have an office, its an interior office and I have no windows... so it's almost more prison-like than my cube was. An office does allow me to listen to music without headphones though, so that is pretty cool. I have my own personal flash-rave at around 2:30 everyday to breakup the afternoon.
If you're ever in the area, feel free to come trance out with me in my office/nightclub.
Uhn-tssss Uhn-tssss Uhn-tssss Uhn-tssss Uhn-tssss Uhn-tssss
