Getting laid off sucks, but sometimes there's a silver lining to that cloud.
After 28 years with the same company, I thought my position was pretty much sacrosanct. I had gained a real "problem solver" reputation, and was usually moved into positions that needed help. In late 2007, I headed up global logistics and customer service for a half-billion-dollar chemical company based outside of Philadelphia, and had saved the company $3-million the first 4 months I was on that job that year and was working on another $15-million in savings that following calendar year - I had already brought in $5-million of it.
I took a small department of folks that were widely known for being inefficient slackers that couldn't do their jobs and ended up (by entitling them, improving business processes and by blocking and absorbing the BS coming down from "on high") into one of the most productive units in the company, while decreasing the staff by a third (one was addicted to painkillers and refused the company's offers to pay for rehab, and the other spent the entire day on the phone talking to family in Central America).
Meanwhile, I also discovered some of the executives had "played games" with import filings, lessening the duty we paid, but if we got caught, would have not only paid huge fines, but would have been banned from all import/export transactions, which would have killed the company. I contacted our parent company's lawyers and assisted them in the "mea culpa" self-admission that got us past all that. In the middle of all that, I worked from home for 2 months, courtesy of three cancer surgeries, but I kept the ball rolling the whole time.
Then in May of 2009, my position was eliminated. What a kick in the gut! Nobody was hiring at all, let alone someone of my age and pay scale. The company was owned by what is now Total Energies, and the french are legally not allowed to lay off people, so the layoffs are exported to us. They were reasonable about it though, giving me about a year and a half's pay as severance and continuing my health insurance at no charge for 2-1/2 years. That, unemployment, and First Rays got us though and it didn't take long for me to stop feeling bad about it.
(I later learned that, after me leaving, they gave back $4.75-million of the savings I'd already made, and never saw a bit of the remaining $10-million. Smart corporate move, no?)
Lo! and behold, about 2 years later, they called and asked if I'd come back - as a contractor - to take over global purchasing for about a year, as the company was being merged into a sister entity in Houston. The pay was excellent, and when the earlier medical coverage expired, we ended up jumping on my wife's coverage at the hospital.
About 14 months later, when the merger was initiated, the purchasing director in Houston asked me to stay on another year or so, working from home, to smooth the transition. She increased my offer by 25%, so...what the hell. That turned out to be icing on the cake. I worked daily for about two months, typically processing some 200 or so emails a day (I get about 50-75 a day now, for First Rays), but toward the end of the 14-month stint, I logged in once a week to see if I had any. I usually didn't. Contract expired, I shipped the laptop back, and one month later activated my Social Security benefits.
