it happened

i got laid off from my first job. it was hard to keep a straight face during the whole thing. the vp who did it (i must've been about her sixth that day) had to effect this pained demeanor (even tho she knew i was leaving anyway) and give the 'it's not you it's the position' speech. by the end she was dropping all the key verbs: 'you have until june 17...if you wanted to ____ before then....if you feel ____ is difficult for you....of course we could....but s--- is on vacation and the paperwork....' lots of sideways glances and buried ante-ante-antecedents. if i wanted to what? scream like a banshee and set the place on fire? decry the decline of life as i know it because my filing techniques are, it turns out, entirely stoppable?

the museum is a sad and warped place and can only become more so with this new round of absurd cuts. it doesn't really affect me—my life will only be made easier with a june 17 departure date, severance, and unemployment—but i'm angry on behalf of my friends there. the cut people are lucky; it's the ones who are staying who are really being shat on. i wish our board's bad behavior would incite large-scale resignations on principle. i wish workplaces everywhere had informal unions of conscience (not consciousness; i'm sick of all those articles about jesus on the job) so that badly run institutions would have to make wiser decisions if they wanted anyone at all to work for them. um. i wish bullies weren't so effective.