Bombs Away

Veronica pulled me into her office today after lunch.

“Faith, I’m not sure how to say this so I’m going to get right to the point: The paper is being shut down. The investors aren’t impressed with the move to digital and we can’t sustain the paper with our current subscriber base, even if it grows by 100% in the next month. Everyone who doesn’t work in tandem with the news station is going to lose their jobs. I need you to start making severance packages. We’re going to announce the two week notice at the end of December.”

I felt like a bomb had gone off. I would be losing my job, too. Steve, Suzy, Dina…all of us will be unemployed and looking for work during the worst possible time.

“Veronica, you need to tell everyone now. People need to start looking for work as soon as possible.”

“I’m not going to be responsible for ruining everyone’s holidays, Faith. Make sure their severance packages are generous. Here’s the budget we have for those,” she said handing me a budget breakdown, “I’m sorry, Faith.”

I left Veronica’s office in shock. I still don’t know what I’m going to do. I spent the rest of the day reviewing the severance packages I had made when she first told me this was a possibility and I added more to them. People who work with the news station will be receiving less but I think that’s just fair since they’ll still have a paycheck coming in; they’ll also be able to choose whether or not they want to be released from their contracts with the news station to seek out better work.

I feel like a traitor walking around the office pretending like everything is okay, looking at all of my co-workers and friends who are about to be out of a job…I asked Veronica if I could work from home on Monday. She said yes. I think she’s worried I’m going to tell people before she officially announces it. I don’t plan to, though. I don’t want to be the bearer of news like that. Living with Stormy and not telling him is going to be hard but I think it will be okay.

I’ve already started looking for more jobs. I applied to two but I don’t think I want to be in HR anymore. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, actually. It’s not fulfilling for me anymore, especially when things like massive layoffs happen. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know how to tell my parents without freaking them out.