Alright.
So it was bad.
They closed an entire building, leaving the remaining few utterly desolate, obliged to continue there, alone, without all the social perks and wonders, for another six months.
For the promise of maybe a six month salary package.
The people staying had a very difficult decision to make, and I'm glad it wasn't mine.
There's a horseshoe wedged so far up my ass that I have this urge to buy a lottery ticket.
My boss is being deported. My coworker, Benoit, who was with us for his 14-month military service, opting to do engineering work rather than boot camp, might end up spending his remaining eight months in the mud in germany somewhere, learning how to strap plastique to the underside of bridges.
Rahim, Pascal, Jean-Marc, so many people, so many friends who have been living in Montreal and loving it, buying houses and cars and furniture, falling in love and memorizing the landscape, are being deported.
They were here on a work visa, for a company that should never have had to close if they hadn't gone public at such a bad time, with such poor resource management.
My boss has two kids, a year away from finishing high school. Their entire lives are here... And they're moving back to france, facing being put back a few grades because our education system bites ass compared to theirs, and his wife is bound to gain a few wrinkles and white hair trying to cope with picking up her entire life, all of a sudden and moving to a country that she hasn't known in fifteen years.
I got off scott free, four weeks vacation, a few bank troubles to take care of, a year's worth of expertise in security, cryptography, various linux platforms and programming languages, and time to think about my career.
I may go back to school yet.
I may apply for unemployment (although I'm still uncomfortable at the thought of collecting money, even though I've contributed so much to it) and finish that Open Source project for OpenSSL. I've got everything I need, the machines, the smartcards, the code that I've written, all of it license-free, the contacts in the industry...
Okay, so I'm missing a smartcard reader. I'm sure I can work something out there.
And I'm having white macaroni and cheese for lunch, wandering about stark naked with hair askew, sipping tea and taking turns working on my CV, putting away the contents of my desk, and working up the courage to go look at job listings.
I'm trying not to let it get to me. I've got everything, plus a kick in the pants to get my life moving at a faster pace.
I've got everything, the warm memory of the guys that passed by my office yesterday for goodbye hugs and one last attempt at asking me out before we parted ways.
"You know, I've always been meaning to ask you this..."
"Hey, uhm, do you think we'll ever meet up again? You know, just the two of us..."
"So, uh, are you single?"
They were so cute.
And just a little bit more alone than I am right now, thinking of them fondly and how their hugs lingered just a little bit longer than a regular goodbye.
Goodbye forever. I hate those.
Goodbye Philippe, goodbye Helene, goodbye Pascal, goodbye Francis, goodbye Michel.
I hope your visas give you enough time to say goodbye to the people you've come to love these past few years.
I got off scott free, with an Ani DiFranco concert last night to boot.
She was stunning, truly, unbelievably, vibrant and alive and filled with funk and strength and the sort of fury that leaves you too helpless to be anything but cheerfully alive.
I'm wearing that scarf in my hair just like we talked about last night, kaff and it doesn't sit quite right, but I'll figure it out.
I have so much ahead of me...
And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry it had to happen. I'm so sorry that they had to cut 20% of R&D, I'm sorry that the Montreal office turned out to be just the right size so as not to make waves across the rest of the world offices, I'm sorry that there was a law passed in France yesterday morning stating that "Any company showing growth in the last year is not allowed to lay off employees" forcing them to shut down even our team, which they hadn't planned until seven am yesterday morning.
So many last minute catastrophes, and I'm sorry.
I'm sorry I understand the management's decision, and I'm sorry I'm not angrier.
David is angry for both of us, I think, stuck finishing that manual on an empty floor, where the walls are going to be yellower than usual for the next few months.
I'm sorry I panicked, too, wondering if this was the end of us. David, I was scared, and this morning with sunrise streaming in on us, I know it's not over for a long time.
And I know that you're going to be hurting more than me, for a lot longer.
But hey, I've got a scarf in my hair and a few more hundred lines of code to write, I've got reserves of strength that have been leaning towards atrophy.
Who's worried?
Well, maybe a little.