The Day They Let Her Go

I hate being right all the time

Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

I found out last week that my manager is being let go.

Just like that.

A decision made somewhere above both of our heads, by people who probably couldn’t pick either of us out of a lineup.

A spreadsheet somewhere got balanced, a headcount got reduced, a f***ing algorithm told them she had to go…and the best manager I’ve had in years is gone by morning.

I’m not going to pretend I’m f***ing okay with it.

She was the rare kind. The kind who actually saw you (literally - in a remote landscape, she came out to visit and we had brunch!).

She made the day job feel almost human, which is a harder thing to do than any job description will ever acknowledge, and a more valuable one.

In a world of managers who manage up and check boxes and forward your emails to their bosses without reading them, she was something else entirely. She was an actual human being who gave a damn.

I actually thought I’d stay with this company til the casket dropped, because I enjoyed working with her so much…

But they let her go.

Here’s the thing about moments like this — and I’ve had enough of them to recognize the pattern now - they don’t feel like warnings when they’re happening.

They feel like losses. Pure and simple.

The hot grief is real, the seething anger is real.

And anyone who tells you to “stay professional” about it has never lost someone who made the unbearable bearable the way she did.

But later — sometimes much later — you realize it was confirmation. A devastating confirmation that the thing you already knew was true.

You were right to start building the exit.

Not because the job is terrible. Not because every day is miserable. But because this is the fundamental nature of the arrangement you accepted. The arrangement most of us accepted before anyone told us we had a choice.

You are a resource, and resources get allocated. When the spreadsheet needs balancing, the resources that don’t show up on the profit line get moved around without ceremony or sentiment.

The people who make your day human? Optional line item.

I’ve spent 20 years in payroll. I’ve processed more terminations than I can count. I’ve sent the final paychecks, calculated the last vacation payouts, closed out the benefits. I know better than most people how this machine works.

It still lands like f***ing betrayal every time a good one goes.

Because we keep hoping the machine has a heart. We keep finding the one person in our corner and thinking okay, this is sustainable now, I can do this. I don’t have to run anymore!

But then the machine reminds us, gently or not, that it doesn’t run on hope or loyalty…

It runs on numbers. On algorithms.

I am also, finally, running on numbers. Just different ones.

The number of clients I can serve. The number of hours I choose to work. The number of years I intend to keep doing meaningful work on my own terms (which, for the record, is all of them. Every last one until I decide otherwise).

Here’s what I want to say to anyone reading this who is still in the machine, still finding their one good manager, still telling themselves it’s not so bad when she’s around:

I see you. That’s real. That relationship is real and it matters and you’re allowed to grieve when it goes.

And also: please don’t let it be the only thing keeping you there.

Because they will balance the spreadsheet eventually. They always do. And the people who made it human will move on or get moved out, and you’ll be left with the machine in its purest form, wondering how it got so cold so fast.

Build the exit. Not just in anger, but in steady self-preservation. Build it because you deserve work that doesn’t require a single good manager to make it survivable.

Build it because the best version of your work shouldn’t depend on someone else’s continued employment.

I lost the closest thing I’ve had to a workplace friend in a very long time.

Tomorrow I’ll get back to building the thing that means I never have to depend on a company’s good graces again.

To ensure I won’t ever have to be back in this chair, hopelessly searching for jobs, betrayed by my hope that this one would be different.

Not because I’m not gutted.

Because I am.

(This is why we build.)

Photo by Adam Barclay on Unsplash