The Twenty-Nine Year Fuse: Reflections On Being Laid Off

When I was 16, I watched (though likely didn’t pay much attention, as 16-year-old me was frighteningly aloof to the real world) as my dad was laid off from his well-paid corporate position.

This was the ’90s: an era when kids like me were essentially feral, riding around on bikes—and then cars—with no reasonable way to contact anyone. It was also a time when “layoff” was still generally seen as at least somewhat a reflection of the quality of work the laid-off person had exhibited. After all, how else could you explain a company letting otherwise-good people go?

Mergers, layoffs, and the real game beneath corporate maneuvering could still play out without so much as a nod to their true motives (or even their existence). The only ones paying attention were those who read the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, delivered in a printed bundle chucked at the doorstep by an eager teen or a recently jobless corporate worker.

I might not have processed much of what I saw, but something silent shifted in the months after Dad stopped going to work. As we said “no” to life’s extras (like vacations, eating out, or the extra $50 for whatever hot new item “all my friends got”) we watched something fundamental change inside him. His ego was severely bruised by being let go.

Somewhere deep in my stubborn psyche, a coiled fuse lit in 1996. It wouldn’t truly explode until October 2025, when I found myself on the receiving end of a mystery call that just appeared on my calendar.

In early 2016, while interviewing for the position, I said something like, “I treat every job like the companies are clients working for me.” Aside from being exactly what you shouldn’t say according to all the interview coaching I was consuming, it was brilliant. I needed any company that hired me to realize one thing: I’m not “theirs.”

I work for the King of all Kings, and one day every knee will bow to Him. Providentially for any team that hires me, God is explicit about what that arrangement should look like. Christians are called to serve, love, and own the best interests of their “earthly masters.” Even (and perhaps especially) non-Christian bosses deserve my A-game. To not serve them is to not serve God, with dire consequences for me and the company.

(As an aside, God never gave me a bad master the whole time I worked there, leading to 9+ years of the best time I’ve ever had. Joyful service + real refinement.)

Every time I encountered a new skill I lacked (or one woefully underdeveloped), I saw two options: begrudgingly learn the hard thing, or joyfully submit to God adding a new tool to my personal workbench, a tool that can’t be taken away. The company might reclaim their laptop, but they’ve permanently equipped me to use it better.

So beneath all the work, the fun times, the paid trips to San Diego (twice), Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Wilmington, Nashville (twice), Greenville, Atlanta, Orlando, St. Louis (and likely some I’m forgetting), that fuse kept unfurling as it burned.

I was continually learning and becoming a better version of myself. My employer was a paycheck, sure, but they gave me just as much as I gave them. I gave them a lot.

When they let me go, far from bruising my ego, all I felt was an explosion of gratitude. The fuse that could have ended in bitterness led instead to a wellspring of thankfulness.

As a final aside: the relative frequency (and internet-driven visibility) of mergers, acquisitions, layoffs, and other corporate chess moves gave me a distinct advantage over Dad in 1996. I knew in 2022 when our little company was acquired by a big one that I was playing a different game. I knew it again when that big company was sold to a bigger private equity firm years later.

I genuinely enjoyed the entire ride.