Thanks. How comforting. They tossed me aside after thirteen years of commitment and effort and good service as well as a wealth of experience and put in place a twenty-two year old without a quarter of that. They made such a move without bothering to ask whether I was willing to make a change within a new setup. Fuck 'em, and by them I mean those faceless higher-ups who have been displaying a recurring habit of stupid thinking for quite some time now.
Loyalty and fairness runs two ways.
I will just comment on what you said without referencing the comment that prompted it.
First, you shouldn't read the rest of this comment if you are feeling very upset or emotional right now, because you won't be in the right mind to take this in the spirit with which it is given.
These decisions are almost always made in a completely bottom-line manner. Your experience, loyalty, and hard work are not represented on a balance sheet. Only your costs--your salary, benefits, etc.--are. It's not fair, and it's not a complete picture of what you are actually worth to the company, but when there is a budget crunch and the company needs to fix the balance sheet, cutting people is a quick and easy way to do that. Unfortunately, people who have been with the company a long time are often the first to go, because they are the most expensive.
Second, experience is not worth as much as people think it is, either to the company where you gained it or future employers. The bulk of what you learned in your 13 years there will likely be picked up by your replacement in 6-12 months, assuming there is a substantial amount of complexity entailed in the position. In other words, many years of experience translates into a large amount of redundancy.
As your boss told you, it was a business decision, not a personal one, and it sounds like it was made by people who don't even know you. That's pretty common, and there's another important lesson in there: you cannot expect loyalty from an employer. You just can't. Even if your boss loves you, they can't do much if upper management has opted for across-the-board cuts. No matter what you've contributed to the company, again, you represent an expense that's taking a chunk out of the bottom line. What you brought to the company over the past 13 years means little in the face of what you cost the company today, tomorrow, next month, next year, etc.
Losing your job can be very painful. I went through the same thing. There's a grieving process involved. Eventually, you will make peace with it, or it will drive you crazy.
If and when you decide to go looking for another job, think about the diversity of experiences you had at Future Shop and any previous employers. What skills did you learn and how did you apply them to various situations? The job market's changed quite a bit over the past 13 years, and a quality that's sought now more than ever is versatility. Don't sell yourself as having done the same job reliably for a long period. Nobody wants that, nobody cares about that. They want to hear how you learned, grew, changed, and adapted over that period. That is a huge part of success in today's job market: demonstrating that you have the ability to dive into something new and aren't afraid to change.
What happened to you isn't fair, but it happens to a whole lot of people. There's also nothing you can do to change it. All you can do is decide how to move forward. As I said in an earlier post, try to view this as an opportunity rather than a rejection or a tragedy. You are no longer tied to this company. No one owns you. What do you want to do
now?
I apologize if the above sounds like a lecture or something. You can take it for what it's worth. Most of it is stuff I wish people had told me back when I lost my job and didn't know what to do. If it's stuff you already knew, then great! If you got some guidance from it, then I'm glad. If none of it appeals to you, then at least you got my buck fifty about it.
