This week I went to an orientation at the "career transition assistance" service that my ex-employer has engaged for those of us who got laid off.
In case you are lucky enough to have never experienced an career transition firm, they are basically hired to help you find your next job. You get a career coach, classes on topics like interviewing and resume writing, access to an office where you can use a PC, fax, printer, copier, etc. and internet resources such as a job boards and online training. They can be very helpful.
Going to the people hired by my ex-employer - let's call them CTA, embracing the awful descriptor "Career Transition Assistance" - was a very interesting experience.
First, I had no idea where the hell I was going when I was driving there. Thank God for sat nav! At one point I wondered if there was going to be a checkpoint and someone was going to ask me for my passport. It's pretty much double the distance I used to drive to work.
Second, the office is in a horrible business park, in a nondescript building where CTA is the only tenant on the top floor. So, as you get out of the elevator, if you look left rather than right, you are met with the encouraging sight of a huge empty office space, pockmarked with little piles of empty cardboard boxes.
Third, my ex-employer has not simply hired an outplacement firm and let them take care of us at their facility. Nope. My ex-employer had set up a special office for it's outcasts, manned by CTA staff. But everything other than the staff is from my ex-employer. The cube furniture, the equipment, the fridges with sodas, the snack machines, the coffee makers. The coffee cups have my ex-employer's branding on them! Way to help us move on!
I noticed all this stuff as I arrived at the facility and, by the time a CTA staff member collected us newbies for the orientation, I was starting to giggle. It was just so ridiculous.
We were taken on a quick tour of the facility. 90% empty cubes, fax/copier/printer, some notice boards with jobs on them, a conference room, offices with closed doors where the career counsellors worked with their clients. It was very, very quiet.
I felt a little reassured when the CTA person explained all the services on offer for us. Hmm, I thought, this could actually be very helpful.
"There are so many resources," the CTA person smiled reassuringly, "that you can use to help you in your transition."
"Yeah," said a delightful New Zealander sitting next to me, "but I have to stop feeling pissed off first.""Oh I know," said the CTA person. "We have a graph that shows the phases you'll be going through. I can show it to you."
I'm sure he felt comforted by that.
I could see that this whole thing could be beneficial, but I started to wonder how I could avoid trekking out to this empty cube farm hell every day. I'd done my research beforehand, so I asked if I could please see a career counsellor in the CTA offices which are much closer to my home.
"This is the office that [my ex-employer] has set up for you," I was told, meaningfully."OK," I said, "but where the hell are we?"
Rather than get my joke, the four people in the room with me explained that we were north of X and south of Y and if you go 2 miles down to Z street and turn right, and go another 3 miles, there's a great chain restaurant that does a really good lunch.
I want my next job to be in the city. These people have suburban stripmallitis.
"Besides," the CTA person went on, "if you come here this is where the networking really happens."
Oh great.
I can drive for forty minutes, walk the silent corridors, sit in a soulless cube and, when I cant stand that anymore, I can meet someone in the kitchen and, both holding our ex-employer-branded coffee cups, we can chat about the good old days. And about how we're moving on up and moving on out. How it's time to break free, and nothing can stop us.