Countdown to July

It does not matter how many times I sit through a re-organisation, the waiting does not get any easier. You know they are plotting to get rid of everyone they don't like and who doesn't fit in, while lying about how it's all about organisation, skills and office locations.

I'm worried about losing the salary, of course. The possible eighteen-month job search is not something I'm looking forward to either. But I have some money – even though it's supposed to be for my pension – and I know I'm not going to lose my mind or identity being out of a job. Not out of work, my work is as a philosopher, logician, human being (washing, cooking, keeping a pleasant house – this is work) and all-round creative person. When I have a job, I'm usually out of (my) work.

What is really irritating me is the thought of having to listen to a load of patronising bullshit, while the HR department “support me in my transition” and explain that I shouldn't take it personally. This is claptrap: if it has my name on it, it's personal. The only things that aren't are circulars addressed to “The Householder”. The moment they tell me, I want out. No handover (what's to hand over – if they don't need me, they don't need what I do or what I know), no hanging around: give me the Compromise Agreement, the breakdown of the severance payment, structure it to be tax-free and I'll sign and return it as soon as my solicitor says it's okay. Otherwise, I'm outta here. Pack my case and go – right then and there. Before they can even start their box-ticking speech.

I am fifty-five years old and this is the fourth time I will have been made redundant in July. My pensions were worth not much last year and even less after what's happened to the markets since. You don't want to know the unemployment figures for men over fifty-five. They want me to sit still while they run through a speech that makes them feel good about what they're doing: they need me to sit there and nod along, or they won't feel justified in themselves. The hell I intend to give them that satisfaction.

Walk around our offices and you would not know all those people think they have a good chance of losing their jobs. Management say they think it's because we're all being “professional”. They don't think it's anything of the sort – they know it's because everyone is in denial. It hasn't happened to some of them, so they don't know it's real yet. They still think they are needed. They have yet to learn that no-one is needed, that everyone is fodder and management think that whatever you do can be done better by someone else or didn't need to be done at all. It's after it all happens that the mood will turn sour and the “professionalism” vanish. By then, I'll be gone.

While I have had myself “out there”, I haven't been that vigorous in finding something. Now I have to go through some motions – not because it will result in a job offer, but because it will make me feel like I'm being pro-active. We're going to hear in the next two-four weeks and I'd like to be running when the ground hits me. Maybe it was just about okay to believe that I had a job in the new organisation until last week, but now it isn't. The odds have swung. If I leave the serious search any longer, I will feel bad about myself.

That's what this is really all about. It has nothing to do with them. It has to do with me: I'm not acting as I need to be. I have to not “judge myself mercilessly” but to start the work. If only I didn't hate job-hunting. And it's only just hit me why. You, gentle reader, may think that the next job is going to make your life better and be fun or interesting or give you lots of travel or whatever it is rocks your boat – but I don't think that about my next job. I can't make money from my work, I can only make it, as so many of us have to, from my job.