Have you read Grasp the Nettle by Marilyn D. If we stay on good terms, keep the door open, who knows? Perhaps you’ll come back and work for us again. “I appreciate this is an upsetting time for you. But if I thought I was going to make Demeter chastened, I was wrong. I didn’t know I could sound quite so sarcastic. Meetings…lunches…parties…fire your employee. I mean, I understand!” I throw up my hands. It’s such a trivial, unimportant detail to you, you couldn’t remember if you’d done it or not. “Of course there was a misunderstanding.” My voice is tart, even to my own ears. “I apologize if there was any misunderstanding,” she says, and her weasel words make me want to slap her. I can see I’ve hit home, from the flinch that passes across Demeter’s face. “So in the lift, you thought you’d already fired me,” I say bluntly. I’ve been so good up to now-such a model employee-being-fired-and-not-making-a-fuss-that it’s as if something in me breaks free in protest. This can’t be reality, it can’t….īut then we arrive at the lift, and something slices through my dream state. Shall I walk you to the lift?”Īnd then I’ve stood up and I’m following her down the hall, and still I feel like I’m in a dream. “In fact, Megan in talent management needs to see you, so she suggested you pop up straightaway. “I’ll just call talent management….” She makes a quick call that I barely hear, my thoughts are such a whorl of terror. If I leave now I can start making applications to other places. I feel as though I’m in a dream as she suggests I might like to work out my week’s notice or I might like to take money in lieu.

I didn’t.ĭemeter is now on to the generic stuff: “Looking forward…any help we can give you…proper paperwork…” She’s started glancing at her screen as she talks. And maybe I should have seen this coming…but I didn’t.

I know there are difficult times and current financial challenges. The thought is so frightening, so engulfing, it feels like a real physical threat, like a hundred-foot tsunami looming out of nowhere, paralyzing me with its enormity. But all the time, my brain is crying out like a child: There is something you can do. And I sit and listen, with my hands clamped so tightly in my lap, they ache.

My not so perfect life book