Cabbage and cole slaw

Being laid off is a shock to the system. Even if it's not a total surprise or if it's really for the best, it's still a shock to the system. It's like thinking, "I am a cabbage," being tossed into a food processor that's set to shred, and having to grasp the concept of being cole slaw.

Not going to work Monday morning made me a bit anxious, but like I do with most things, I made a plan. Step one, apply for unemployment. Step two, enroll in COBRA. Oh, wait, I can't do either until I get packages from the company that's managing my TPP (Transitional Pay Plan) and the Gannett benefits center. So not only did I have no control over my choice to leave my job, I now have no control over picking the pieces back up and restarting my life.

I'm not naive enough to think that caring about a person will ever outweigh caring about profits, but it's still hard for me to wrap my head around the lack of conscience or humanity in the process. Companies have turned terminations into a machine. It's not personal; it's business, and business is about the bottom line. I get it. After nine years at Gannett, I've seen some callous moves by management. It should be criminal the way they've treated some good and loyal people. (I could definitely have it worse.)

It's my warped sense of loyalty and responsibility that have kept me at Gannett all these years. I've been watching more and more go wrong, and the draw of solving a new problem kept me strung along like a drug. My co-workers and I had become a family, and I didn't want to leave them. I put everything I had into my work and my work family. I took on mountains of extra responsibility and fought the good fights for the benefit of the magazine. I made the mistake of thinking any of it would matter in the end.

At the meeting where I was laid off, I listened as the head of my department read the script in front of him. When he'd come to the magazine from another part of Gannett, he faced a neck-breaking learning curve to adapt to our business model. On more than one occasion, I removed his hind end from the fire. I helped him succeed as our leader. We'd been in the trenches together for four and a half years. We'd been through the turnover of more support staff than I'd like to recall. As the words came out of his mouth, what shook me the most was how cold they were, hollow. As he thanked me for my nine years of service and everything I'd done for him personally, I would have rather he just skipped it. It hurt more that he was saying words he should have meant ... and didn't.

Some would say I'm lucky to have gotten any kind of package when leaving, but for everything Gannett has ever given me, I can assure you they got more than they deserved in return. The nice lady from HR went through the highlights, and I'd like to think that when she said, "And you get to keep your benefits until the end of the month," that she didn't realize that was less than a week, only four business days. Four. Days.

That was a Thursday, so first thing Friday morning, I checked all of my prescriptions, and I have a few, to reorder as much as I could while I still had benefits. I took literally the instructions to apply for unemployment benefits and enroll in COBRA immediately. Since I didn't have the necessary paperwork in the packet, I started calling the numbers they gave me to see what I could do to move things along. Surely in the digital age, I could do things online. Something. Nope. I had to wait for the hard copies to be delivered via U.S. Postal Service. Really?! Two things bother me here.

First, with all due respect to the postal service, there are much more efficient, quicker and environmentally-friendlier ways to get forms to people. I already had or would have to set up accounts on the TPP and Gannett benefits websites; why not just let me download the forms or fill them out online? Snail mail, really? It's not like these papers aren't essential for me to get paid and have healthcare for the next few weeks (I hope). For a company so big on being digital, I say #epicfail!

Second, forget that someone worked for you for nine years, just focus on them being a fellow human being. Laying them off at the end of the month, and cutting off their benefits at the end of that month, is unconscionable. I called to find out how to enroll in COBRA, but I was told the benefits center hadn't even gotten my paperwork and would have to process my termination before they could send me the information.

There is no possible way that management didn't know my job was going to be be eliminated at least a few days before they did it. I'd wager it had been at least a week. It was certainly long enough to make sure my email and computer access were removed before I even came out of the meeting where I was terminated (I'm not going to get into how insulting that is.), but they couldn't manage to get my termination processed through the benefits center to get my COBRA paperwork started.

I waited for over a week to get a letter that was dated August 1, but wasn't postmarked until August 3 and I didn't receive until August 6. That's six days worried that if I got sick or hurt how on earth I'd pay for it. The real kicker is that the letter only told me what benefits I'd have available under COBRA and notified me it would take another 2-3 weeks for my enrollment papers to arrive.

I know that COBRA is retroactive to the first day I lost my benefits, but what is someone, an unemployed someone, supposed to do when the doctor or ER asks for my insurance card? How am I supposed to pay them until I can get enrolled, file a claim and be reimbursed? The standard co-pays don't exactly apply. I know, it's not their problem.

What will be their problem are the myriad loose ends I leave and the institutional knowledge that go with me. What will be my boss's problem is living with having cast someone aside coldly who did as much to help them as anyone ever will. Gannett still has a significant revenue problem, and what they saved by laying me off on July 26 vs. August 1 won't even begin to make up the difference.

So I'm cole slaw. I can live with that. It may only be a moral victory, but I'll take what I can get these days.