The Man Without a Comp'ny - Where the Hell Was I?

January 2, 2012

The Man Without a Comp’ny

I am officially unemployed. But only for the next ten hours or so, which is comforting.

Actually, I’ve been unemployed for most of the long weekend. My final day at the last office was Friday, and my last “official” day Saturday, the 31st.

“On the way out the door Friday, they took my keys, my ID card, my logo travel mug and thirty bucks from my wallet.”

I’m not sure how “last working day” and “last official day” differ particularly in this case. On the way out the door Friday, they took my keys, my ID card, my logo travel mug and thirty bucks from my wallet. I also had a shoe print on the ass of my jeans and a ‘NO WORKY HERE NO MORE‘ sign taped to the back of my shirt.

So it wasn’t like I could come in Saturday to do any work, if I’d wanted. Maybe I could’ve still called a press conference as a ‘representative of the organization’? Or gone on strike to protest the sorry state of tater tots in the cafeteria? Coached first base for the company softball team?

Don’t know, and when the ball dropped on Animatronic Dick Clark’s New Year’s Overtanned Eve, it was all moot, anyway. I was no longer affiliated with the old place, after eight-and-a-half years of employment.

(You might think that’s even longer than I’ve been writing this drivel.

You’d be mistaken. This particular website endeavor began as a distraction to give me something to think about other than the fact that my company-before-last was planning a tsunami of impending layoffs at the time, and my wife and I had just bought and moved into our first house. Complete with crushing mortgage payments and a furnace system that was possibly older than I was.

The life crises, they can make some awfully strange bedfellows. And some wonky-assed websites, to boot.)

Meanwhile, I’m not yet on board with my new job. That starts tomorrow, bright and eagerly cheerful chipper early — just like all of my mornings are, if any of my soon-to-be bosses happen to be reading. Yaaa-ay, morning!

(Oh, please. We’re all “sellouts”. Get over it, princess.)

The point is, I spent the weekend as a free agent. A rogue worker. A man without a comp’ny. Unemployedicado.

Fortunately for me, it was just a weekend. Last time — when my job canoe was swept away by that parenthetical layoff tsunami up there — it took a few months to get back to the grindstone. Now, I’ve only barely rolled my sleeves down, and it’s time to roll them back up again and jump in.

As a matter of fact, I got a head start on things. I took a quick jaunt over to the new office last week to settle some details, and the HR folks sent me home with some of the paperwork I’ll need to turn in tomorrow morning, to get the ball rolling more quickly.

Of course, I didn’t actually fill out anything they gave me. That doesn’t seem like the sort of thing a free agent — like myself — would do. But I did get a head start. I confirmed that the paperwork they gave me was, indeed, made of ‘paper’, and looked an awful lot like ‘work’.

So there’s that. I’m calling it progress. And maybe time for a beer. Because tomorrow, I’ll be a comp’ny man again. Starting at eight o’clock in the a-of-m. Bright and eagerly cheerful chipper early. Just how I likes ’em.

(Maybe I should drive over now, and sleep in the car. Just to be safe.)