Tough Day

  No postcard to go with this post.  Today was a tough day.  LivingSocial laid off 400 of our 4,500 employees this morning, mostly in the U.S.  The news was leaked yesterday and I thought I was mentally prepared for whatever today might hold.  I was wrong.   Fortunately, I wasn’t a victim to the lay-offs, but so many colleagues in my office were.  Our Seattle office was already small.  We're a tight knit crew and departments work closely together in person, unlike our DC headquarter offices which are spread out all over the city.  On top of that, we’re all friends, so letting anyone go is going to hurt.  Seeing half the office go was brutal.

  When the goodbye hugs started mid morning, so did my tears.  That happened once more during the day and again when I was telling my roommate about it all at home.  I’ve cried more today than I have in a long time.  I’m so sad.  I’m grieving the loss of co-workers, the way things were, the trust I had in company leadership to some extent, the naive safety I felt in a fun place like livingsocial.  I miss it all.  In the midst of the sadness, I’m confused, frustrated, hurt, and somehow still shocked that it’s all real.  As a result of all of that, I’m struggling with being thankful to still have my job.  I know excitement and gratitude don’t always go hand in hand in life. But now I’m realizing that having one without the other is really difficult.  Since sadness has replaced my excitement currently, thankfulness is hard to come by.

November 30, 2012 – The day after layoffs is painful in a different way.  You’re still adjusting the loss of what was and the friends who were let go, as well as being left with their work.  There were moments I wanted to believe it was all a bad dream.  But the 3+ hours of video conference meetings with leadership attempting to explain why and share the vision for where we’re going snapped me back to reality pretty quickly.  The short and incredibly simplified explanation is that it had to do with long term profitability.  That meant having to make some hard decisions.  In some small way, it was comforting to hear the CEO say yesterday was hard for him too.  I guess acknowledging it was a good starting point, at least for me.  He walked through the vision for 2013 and as defeated as I felt yesterday, the vision for tomorrow is a good one if all goes according to plan.  Through the course of this week I have learned that the “if” can make all the difference. It’s the nature of business.  Even the best analysts can’t know answers to the “ifs”.

  As this ridiculously tough week comes to a close and as much as I wish things hadn’t changed, I’m thankful to have been in the office yesterday to ride the emotional roller coaster.  I definitely don’t want to do it again anytime soon, but unfortunately large scale lay offs are common in companies with a big vision for the potential to come.  I learned a lot and I’m not sure the experience would have been as impactful or real had I not been in the office to live the emotion first hand.  I’m also not sure all the lessons can be articulated into words.  They are intangibles; shifts in thinking, perspective, understanding, confidence.  I was naively innocent in terms of harsh business reality before.  I’m not now.  Emphasizing all the more, that the only sure thing is the Rock on which I stand.  My heart longs all the more to be more deeply rooted in that foundation.