Getting Laid Off; or Resource Inaction

A personal essay about the time I was let go from what felt like a kind of family, an experience all too many are now living.

¹ Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. ² Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. ³ Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. ⁴ Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you.

– James Chapter 5, NIV Bible

On February 22, 2025, I opened an email from the DES unemployment office of the North Carolina Department of Commerce. They had scheduled a hearing for me on March 7 of this year to investigate whether or not I was overpaid unemployment benefits.

After my former employer laid off my team and half of my division, I applied in good faith to all the resources available to me, including North Carolina unemployment benefits.

While navigating the emotional turmoil of losing my job, I did my best to obtain what I was entitled to after having paid into the system for well over a decade across two different states. I have all my documentation well-kept in records, and I’m prepared to respond to whatever comes my way in that meeting.

Let this also serve as a warning to the growing number of people laid off in both the private and public sectors: you may not be entitled to what you think you are. That’s all I’ll say about that. Consult credentialed experts in whatever areas are relevant.

I was walked into a room and summarily dismissed by two people I had never met before. Apparently, my former employer was firing so many people that they had to pull in backup just to cover everyone.

I don’t think about the people who told me I was fired. I don’t have any anger for the people who were made to say the words, “Sam, we’re here to inform you that today will be your last day at…” I don’t hold it against them.¹

But I think a great deal these days about the people who put me in this position. I think about them every time I throw up from fear of being evicted.

At the company I’d served for four years, the last two were spend patiently waiting, filling a seat in a job that was lazily cobbled together during a corporate restructuring.

I’m not one to fill a seat. I applied for jobs within the company while turning down others outside of it. I was loyal—my employer hired me at the height of COVID when no one else would. For that, I would forgive so much.²

I do think about those people whose gross mismanagement of a vast workforce they never understood resulted in my current situation.

I thought about those men when I stumbled into the emergency room the day I was fired because I couldn’t stop throwing up. I was so scared to tell my parents that I had lost my job that I couldn’t even keep water down.

I thought about those men when I waited for hours on hold with the unemployment office.

I thought about those men who made me have to interview again and go through the broken job application process that we all suffer through.

Now, I think of all you again as I’m facing a hearing for overpayment of unemployment insurance.

That’s my life now, and it’s because of you.

That is the life millions of others now face due to the greed, sloth and myopia of middle management.

I never forget how fortunate I am to be free of debt and comfortable in my home for the foreseeable future. I think about everyone who has had to—and always will have to—struggle so much more than I ever will. I think about how much worse it is for almost every other person who has been laid off than me.

And I think about the people at those companies, those organizations, and in those public positions responsible for our plight.

So, I did the only thing I could: I resolved and never again pay for the mistakes that I and my colleagues not only saw coming, but repeatedly brought to your attention.

I would rather die a barista, up to my nose ring in debt, than pay the price for the blunders of men who collect more money in one year than I ever will.

Shame on you for what you did to us.

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• Shame on you for your mendacity.

  • The leadership of my former employer enthusiastically solicited ideas from all corners—anything that might help the company do something better or sell more. They claimed to want to hear from us. And we gave them so many opportunities to listen. I had ideas. Many others had great ideas—ideas that could have been put into practice with little-to-no investment. But you said no to every single one.

  • The flow of information within the company was so balkanized that no one knew the entire story of why anything was happening. This was by design.

  • Those who told me I was fired could not tell me why because they themselves had not known.

  • I find this a cruel practice to enforce. Tell one person to fire another person and then not be able to tell them why?

  • I had to get my gumshoes on hoist the bulletin board to connect the dots before I was able to piece together a plausible scenario of who and what failed where and how.

• Shame on you for your avarice.

  • It makes me angry to remember leadership bragging at quarterly meetings about how much cash on hand we had.

  • Apparently, my former employer has enough liquid assets sitting in the bank to pay everyone’s payroll for decades. It makes me angry that you didn’t take a small part of that to keep a team of dedicated employees.

  • Today it…collects dust? I guess? Better in the vault than subsidizing for a bounty on the dinner tables of my team and colleagues.

• And most of all: shame on you for your lack of imagination.

  • When a talented employee came to you with new ideas for a role that would contribute directly to the company’s success—when he did this not once, not twice, but on three separate occasions—and still, you chose to take the quick and easy path of inaction.

  • There was no button for the job in Workday;³ ergo, the job could not exist.

Actually, you know what? One more thing:

Shame on you for the way you dismissed my team and all the others you fired.

The way you handled that was callous and perfunctory.

When you escorted me off the premises—that broke my heart.

The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. ⁵ You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. ⁶ You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.

– James Chapter 5, NIV Bible⁴

I forgive you. But I will never forget. I will never forget the people who started the chain of events that ultimately brought this pen to paper.

P. S. ~ ~

All I ever asked of you was to—for once—think bigger.

1. Ultimately I bear no person, including those responsible, ill will, even now.

2. That is something else I will never forget.

3. Workday is an HR software that is responsible for the decline of western work culture and civilization. You’re put in a spreadsheet and navigate your career by way of formulae.

4. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James%205&version=NIV