On Monday, the company I have been working at for about 2.5 years had a layoff. Ten percent of my colleagues got let go. This company, in its entire 13-year history of existence, had never had a reduction in force before. And it was pretty obvious one was coming: we didn’t hit our Q4 numbers, spend has been pulled way back, especially on work travel. I was just waiting for when it was going to happen… and wondering if I would be impacted. Our CEO gave a cryptic nod to it on Sunday night, and then on Monday morning, he announced on Slack that there would be a layoff later in the day: if you were impacted, you’d get an email within 10 minutes of the all-hands meeting ending. If you were not impacted, you would get a calendar invitation to the all-hands meeting the next day. So after the meeting ended and we all got off Zoom, we sat there for ten minutes, wondering if we’d get cut. As a defense mechanism, once I saw the Slack message in the morning, I had just assumed I would get laid off. Because… if I assume the worst, then I couldn’t possibly get too upset, right?

I guess that’s how I deal with layoffs now. Because I’ve gotten laid off twice before, fired once (yep), and every single company I’ve ever worked at has had endless layoffs where I was unlucky and “lucky,” I always just assume the worst. I cannot even count how many layoffs I’ve seen happen across the last 15 years I’ve spent working full-time; I’ve lost track. I feel sorry for the people who think that their individual contributions are so great that they couldn’t possibly get selected. That type of naiveté should only exist if you’re super inexperienced and in your early 20s; after that, that type of thinking is just flat out stupid and ignorant. We’re all disposable. Even the CEO of a company is at the mercy of their board or shareholders. At the end of the day, we are all just a number.

Was I happy I wasn’t affected? Obviously. Who wants to look for a new job in this miserable environment where pretty much every company is reducing its staff and cutting everywhere? But I honestly just felt numb in general. There’s really no such thing as “job security” anymore, anywhere.

I had a call with a colleague of mine on a separate team. He knew I was out sick the last two days. He asked me what had happened and how the weekend was, so I point blank just told him everything. We also had some annoying topics to discuss regarding customers, so all in all, it wasn’t the most uplifting conversation ever. But we both joked about it and he said, “well, I’m not used to seeing this animated version of Yvonne, but I can take it!”

Even when things really suck, and when all you can see is that dog meme, the one of the dog with the house burning around him, saying “This is fine,” I still try to inject humor into it all. Because at the end of the day, your disposition is a choice. You don’t really always get to choose your circumstances, but you do choose your attitude about it at the end of the day. And if you can’t laugh about dumb things that happen, then what are you going to laugh about?

Even when we haven’t been in a recession, my dad has always complained that we’ve been in a recession for as long as I can remember, as far back as I can remember, So, you can imagine what it is like when there actually IS a recession happening, and what the general negativity and tone is like from my parents. My mom has been calling me the last several days, but I haven’t been calling her back because by the time I remember to, it’s either too late and I’m tired, and the last person I want to talk to when I’m really exhausted is my mom because she will probably say something to annoy me, and then I’ll just have to cut her off. So I waited until I finished work yesterday afternoon to call her back. Of course, she asked how my job was going and if I thought any layoffs were going to happen. She’s nervous we’re all going to lose our jobs. But then again, it’s my mom: she needs to be nervous and worry about SOMETHING, anything. She will just grab anything that could be a potential scare. But to be fair, the news has been endless when it comes to all the tech and financial companies laying off now. Most of these companies do not even need to lay people off; they’re just doing it preemptively or because other big wigs are doing it, which is even more fun for employees.

The truth is.. I’ve gotten laid off so many times now that I generally have become numb to it. I no longer take it personally. Sure, it sucks in the moment and in the 24 hours after that. But then, you get over it and move on. I realize it’s just a game of chances and luck. Sometimes, sure, I could have probably played the politics game more at work, but because I don’t care to, I realize that anything could happen to me. I’m just another employee, another number, and when people finally come to terms with this and realize that they aren’t “special,” they won’t be so hard on themselves when they lose their job in a layoff. Some people have been lucky and have never experienced what it’s like to get laid off in their career. That’s great for them. But once it’s happened to you, and has happened a number of times, you just kind of get jaded. It doesn’t matter how hard you work, and sometimes even how little you work — it’ll probably happen to you sooner or later. So because of this, there’s really little reason to worry. It’s perhaps too logical, but we should not worry about things totally out of our control. And given all my past experiences, I know that if I were to get laid off, I’d eventually find something else and just continue life. Life moves on. Pretty much no one stays at one company their entire career anymore.

For the next two days, I’ll be onsite with customers for multiple-hours long meetings. Today, I was onsite with a customer for 2.5 hours, and I felt completely, mentally drained after that. First, I was already feeling out of practice with getting ready for the meeting in the superficial sense- deciding what to wear, how to style my hair, etc. Then, while onsite, I realized, in real time, how much more exhausting it is to be in person in real life with customer meetings than to be on the same meeting via a Zoom call. There is something about being in person that feels so exhausting and draining now that it makes me wonder if going back to a regular cadence of in-person meetings is even feasible or enjoyable for me at this point in time. With the world opening up more and companies looking at the current time as an “endemic” rather than a “pandemic,” more in-person meetings will be expected. And well, it’s part of my actual job description — to meet customers and build relationships. But with three years working from home and having very limited in-person customer contact, I feel a bit out of it. It was fun in some ways to be onsite again and have that type of interaction, as having in-person interactions is obviously a lot more real and stimulating, but I can’t help but admit it was just tiring. I passed out pretty quickly this evening and will likely do the same after tomorrow’s all-afternoon long meeting, as well.

Wow. Almost three years after the pandemic began, I actually have two customer meetings, two days in a row, in New York next Wednesday to Thursday. I’m having lunch with colleagues both days before being onsite the rest of the afternoon with customers. I kind of got thrown into this quite quickly, but was fine to go since I haven’t done this in so long. Wednesday’s meeting is also territory I am not quite used to: pre-sales meetings. I rarely attend these, but was happy to be asked to go to this one since I’m local, and it would be good to do something new for once. Also, I cannot even believe some level of normalcy has started with work travel again. The next question I have in my mind is: what the heck am I going to wear, and am I completely out of practice with how to even do in-person customer meetings? Plus, it’s winter, so I have to dress warmly and look good and professional. Talk about all the things I never thought much about pre-pandemic that I actually have to think about now!

I had two meetings scheduled today: one was at 9am and external, while the second one was at 1:30pm and internal. The external meeting got cancelled, and the internal meeting still happened. It was just a 1:1 with someone I got assigned to help onboard onto our team. She said almost all her meetings got cancelled today or people said they were out sick, so she decided to forgo wearing makeup. “Sure, everyone’s sick! How convenient!” she laughed.

Motivation to work after a long time away from work is really hard. It’s almost like both your mind and your body are dragging, wondering why you have to be back at work when instead, your trip could have just gone longer. But I guess that’s why people take advantage of “sick” days! But I guess we all need something to jolt ourselves back into action to prevent from being lazy and not accomplishing anything.

Either way, it’s hard to not do anything when you have a young baby who is completely dependent on you to raise. Kaia still has to eat, so I still have to prep food for her. That’s my real work now.

The last couple of days have been fun, intense, and tiring at the office. With team offsites, it’s always socializing on steroids, but with this specific offsite, given it’s our very first time all meeting in person, and many of us have been colleagues working at this company for nearly two years, it was even more intense. We were all trying to make up for lost in-person time, and it felt like almost every minute I wasn’t talking with one person, I was talking to another or getting tapped or waved at by yet another person. It felt almost surreal to finally meet all my colleagues I’ve worked with closely over the last two years… finally in person and not in a Zoom box on my computer screen. It was also funny to see how some are much taller or shorter in real life than I had imagined!

I always knew this before, but this week has made me more aware of it: nothing can ever replace in-person meeting and interaction. While Zoom, Google Hangout, and FaceTime can bridge the gap when in-person interaction is not possible, there is nothing more refreshing or revitalizing as people being in the same place and talking and laughing together. I almost felt like I was a new employee here meeting everyone for the first time even though that was clearly not the case at all. Our team has a really good, healthy vibe, and I’m grateful to work among people where toxicity does not even remotely exist, and where we actually do all have good intentions and support each other both in and outside of work. This is the healthiest, most balanced workplace I’ve ever been in for the last 14+ years of working. It feels good to be an employee here.

At the last company plus my current company where I work, all the offices have had rotating snacks in every kitchen, ranging from healthy to very unhealthy to “I want to seem like I am healthy and also trendy and charge you a lot to eat me” snacks. Because beyond middle school, I haven’t really been a huge snacker at all. I’ve mostly discovered snacks I’ve enjoyed through work, my friend who works at Trader Joe’s, or Chris through his obsession for Australian Arnott’s and other snacks down under.

Well, today was my very first time being in an office in about 2.5 years — since the first week of March 2020, when the last company saw its very first COVID cases, and we shut down every global office. And since I work remotely full time, being in an office will continue to be a novelty for me as long as I work here. So of course, I took advantage of things I normally don’t get, like socializing time with colleagues I was finally meeting for the very first time… plus SNACKS. ENDLESS SNACKS AND DRINKS.

Lemonade that is lightly sweetened with local honey in the Southern U.S., cane sugar, and “not too sweet” in Mark Wiens’s voice? An entire mango dried, or a half pineapple dried into what looks like a strip of fruit leather, with zero additives, not a single preservative and no sugar? Chicken skin “chips” that resemble pork rinds? Endless types of Kind nut bars? I was even reunited with Tea’s Tea jasmine green tea in a bottle, which I used to always have at my last company when I was in the office full time. Going to the office is not only a novelty now to see and socialize with colleagues, but also simply to explore the snack selection to see what is on offer. A comedian I follow on Instagram recently joked that one of the biggest perks of working in an office was free printing; while that is definitely true (especially since we live in Manhattan with limited space where pretty much no one owns a printer) and extremely useful, what is also true is… who is going to turn down free food?