Dont take it personally in my experience its a combination of 2 things.
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They dont want to remind you that you got laid off. If you’re doing it tough they dont want to be like “hey man, we had some good times back when you had a job remember?”
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You are a very real reminder that the same thing could happen to them. Even if you landed on your feet, they might not.
That combined means that reaching out and catching up is just kinda scary. I had an amazing night at a bar with an old work bestie when we bumped into each other a few months after he got sacked.
That’s fair the survivor’s guilt is probably real. I think I’ve been really stuck in my own head about my feelings and situation I’ve been struggling with that understanding.
I think I need to think about this. Thank you for your perspective.
Did you guys hang outside of work?
Yeah quite a bit: gaming and going to bars and shows. I felt like I got pretty close to the people I worked with, not unprofessionally or party animal but just an ear and a shoulder.
After a bit of a cool off period I would reach out to one of them. Ask if they want to get a beer or something, I’ve left jobs that I had friends at. Some of them, it turns out, were really just work friends, but some of them were just waiting to see if I wanted to reconnect and were happy to hang
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I moved around a lot as a kid. One thing you learn pretty quickly, is to make clean breaks.
Sure you can try to stay friends, but once you’ve moved away, those friendships will inevitably fade. Those friendships were real, but they existed in a particular context. You bonded over work stuff. You talked about work stuff. You’re no longer a part of that context, so they’ve ended. 99% of the time you can only delay the inevitable.
That doesn’t mean the friendship wasn’t real. It just means that it didn’t last. That’s life.
Join a club, volunteer, make new friends.
This is honest and comforting. Thank you.
As someone who has worked at the same job for 17 years now and had my original boss fired a week ago this hits hard… after that amount of time I really have no idea what to do now and it’s super weird not having them around, or anyone for that matter, to provide direction.
To clarify he was not a bad worker, or did anything wrong outside of being there to long with a higher end job that the company felt wasn’t needed despite not really understanding that he did a lot more than his title suggested because that’s what happens when your there over 25 years. The company has been doing terrible for the last few years and has suffered a lot of layoffs… I talked to him a bunch after but I definitely feel like I won’t really talk much going forward since our biggest thing in common was that we worked together.