The Worst April Ever
What an April! But I can’t even talk about what happened without first giving you my perspective going into it. As far as March goes, things were pretty normal except for one thing. And that’s fine. I like normal because it’s boring (like me). At the end of March, I had the annual review with my boss. He loved working with me and appreciated what I did as I received my yearly raise. And that’s the 2nd half of my March. Boring. The one exception to all of this was that, at the start of March, I actually took a week off of work, which is something I never really do. But I had a good reason. I went in for knee replacement surgery. Most people familiar with me know I’ve had knee issues for a while. My right knee has kind of sucked since near the end of my college years. I tried to fix it. Some scopes with surgery, manipulation, physical therapy, all that helped a little but didn’t quite fix it. The most extreme thing I did was lose a bunch of weight. I went from my heaviest at 300 at the start of 2018, to my lightest just before surgery, at below 150. So to lose over half your bodyweight in fat, it’s quite an achievement, one few people will ever accomplish.
Now we get into April. Everything is about as normal as you’d first expect. I’m recovering nicely, going in for physical therapy 3 times a week for 2 hours a visit, plus doing my workouts at home all while working from home. This is exactly how I imagined the month going. And, if it stayed mundane, I wouldn’t be here writing this (nor would you be here reading this). Halfway through the month my boss calls me up for a meeting along with a few of my coworkers. Our current positions are kind of in flux. We might be getting rid of it and asks if I want to join the SDR team or, if not, transfer to another department. I’m kind of familiar with SDR’s work; they mostly deal with current customers whereas my position was entirely finding new customers for our reps to reach out to. It’s similar in some ways which works to my advantage but also a bit different that I’d need to go through some training before starting. I figured I could come in and shadow a few people, try it out for a few days and maybe see if there are other positions in the company to transfer to. So, that’s what I did. I learned from Taylor, one of the best people on the team. If there was anyone I should emulate, it would be him He taught me what he did, which wasn’t too complicated. I just needed to learn to use SalesForce in some new unique ways that I hadn’t done before and he had some email templates for me to use when I fully started working. As for now, I would just be his assistant, working behind the scenes with him and also aiding anyone else who needed help.
My knee doctor gave me a call. He needs to see me tomorrow.
Literally, the next day. That’s usually not a good sign. Typically, news can
wait. But this one couldn’t. He was pleased with the progress I was making with
physical therapy, told me to continue on with that. During surgery, they
noticed some chalky bone in the back of my knee. They sent it to a lab in Washington for testing
and we just got the results back now. It was a tumor. Now the tumor was in the
knee that they removed, so I might be in the clear. They would need to send me
up to Huntsman in Salt Lake City
to be sure. If there’s nothing, awesome. If there’s something, we can start
treatment. I had UnitedHealth insurance through my work, I had saved up a bit
of money through my 9 years at DigiCert. I think I’ll be fine. I gave the guys
at Huntsman a call. They saw my file come in from my knee replacement doctor.
But most of my pre-surgery files were at Intermountain, which was another
healthcare system. Once they got those files from them, they would be able
analyze things, figure out a way forward and get back to me for consultation
first week of May, which was a handful of days away. Awesome! Not the tumor
part. That sucks. Awesome that I didn’t have to wait long before we could start
moving forward.
I kept this hidden from mostly everyone. I figure, why let them worry if it’s
nothing? I did let my boss know the tumor and that I might be taking a few more
vacation days. He was 100% supportive. Whatever I needed, just ask. The Lehi
office of DigiCert is kind of like that. Totally willing to cater to whatever
you might need. It’s why I’ve worked here for 9, going on 10 years. I had a
bunch of Paid Time Off accumulated. Like, A LOT. Every December my boss would
shoot me an email letting me know that only 240 hours of PTO would carry over
to the next year and to spend the extra. Like I said earlier, I’m pretty
boring. I don’t go anywhere or do anything. Makes keeping up with me pretty
easy. At most, things happen to me. Like crazy, conspiratorial roommates. But
let’s not get into that right now. So, should the worst happen, I have about 6
weeks of PTO to go through the treatment and recover. I’m glad I saved it all
up rather than using it going on vacations.
I got a call Monday morning during physical therapy. A number showed up on my screen, so they weren’t a contact. I was honestly floored. Man, Huntsman said they’d get back to me in May and here we were the 1st morning of May and they’re already getting back to me. These guys are fantastic! I pick up the phone and the person introduces themselves. “I sent a link to your DigiCert email. I need you to click on that now!” What? I take another look at the number and notice the area code. California. Not the guys from Salt Lake. I apologized and told him I was currently at physical therapy and thus not working. He asked me when I could because this needed to get done today! I told him I could only do it after therapy was done and I returned home. He told me 1pm then, so I had about an hour and a half to finish up. Thankfully, I was almost done because Physical therapy, from start to finish, is about 2 hours for me. I’m definitely getting my money’s worth in pain here. Still, this call is kind of suspicious. I’m not a security person at DigiCert, so I don’t get work that needs to be done right that instant. I’m thinking this guy is a scammer. Every once in a while, we get a phishing email trying to get into our system. We have a system to report these. Just last week Sunday, I actually got a text message telling me that the DigiCert Service Desk was done with my request and to click on the link. I thought that was odd because the Service Desk doesn’t send me texts, just emails. And I know they didn’t send me an email because I was working at that very moment (Yes, I work Sundays even though I don’t have to. I told you, I’m boring). I informed the Security Operations Center about the text and included a photo of the number when that happened. I was for sure going to tell them about this call. I can imagine this freaking quite a few people out enough to click on a virus-laden link. I finished up my physical therapy, went home and noticed the email. But there was also a message from him on the company instant messaging system. I check the address book that stores the emails of all the employees and, sure enough, there he is. I didn’t recognize the guy but I figured he probably had something to do with the SDR team. Taylor, the one I was shadowing, had been out of the office and probably forgot to tell me about a meeting. So, 1PM rolled around and here I was in a meeting with him and another person. I apologized for not being able to meet him earlier. I explained to him that I was doing physical therapy 3x a week in the morning because I just had knee replacement surgery. As for my confusion on the phone when I picked up, I thought he was from the hospital up north calling me about treatment because they found a tumor in my old knee. It’s just been a wild April.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” He said
with the emotionless tone of a robot trying and failing to emulate human
empathy. “These talks are never easy.”
These talks? Does he meet a lot of people who have cancer? Sounds like he’s a
cancer harbinger. If he needs to talk to you, get yourself checked out.
“But we’ve been looking at the SDR team and we’ve decided to make some cuts. And you, unfortunately, were one of the people cut.”
I smiled a bit. Of course I would be cut. I explained to him I wasn’t actually part of SDR yet, I was only shadowing Taylor at the moment. That’s why my numbers are so low, probably at zero if the work I did for Taylor didn’t count. SDR was one of the few places I was looking at transferring to, so they put me in here in the meantime while I try things out. That didn’t matter, still being cut. All the Paid Time Off I accumulated and was going to use, the tumor diagnosis I needed to work through, none of that mattered. I was still being let go. Me along with a bunch of other people, including my boss. They got my personal email to send me my severance package information. Once that meeting was over, I was cut off from the company instant messenger, as my coworkers I was in the middle of chatting with would soon discover. Practically in a blink, I was in a completely different place. The last time this happened, I was at least in the hospital, with a nurse and my brother there to help me readjust to reality. Now, it was just me, alone in my room, in front of a work laptop that I was locked out of.
I cheated a bit by including May 1st in my “April” summary but considering all the bad news that month had for me, the 1st really felt more like an April 31st to me. Thankfully, the severance keeps me on insurance for a while and I’ll get the papers for COBRA and be able to continue insurance afterwards for a few hundred a month. As for what’s next, I have no idea.
Comments
Post a Comment