“Company-wide restructuring,” the manager enunciated, his voice dripping with the practiced empathy of a man who had already had his coffee. “We are eliminating forty percent of the analytics division.”
Twelve years. I had given that firm twelve years of late nights, skipped vacations, and the kind of loyalty that usually warrants a gold watch, not a cardboard box. I had brought in three of their top ten clients. None of that mattered. The math was simple: my salary was a line item that no longer balanced.
I signed the severance agreement with a hand that didn’t tremble until I reached the parking garage. I sat in my car for exactly eleven minutes. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I simply breathed in the scent of my own leather seats—seats I had paid for with the very job that had just evaporated. Then, I called Greg Whitmore, my business partner in a secret venture I had been nurturing in the shadows for two years.
