So You're a Creative Who Just Got Laid Off - You Won't Believe What Happens Next!
I WROTE THIS IN MARCH OF 2017 AFTER I HAD GOTTEN LAID OFF and the response was incredible. somehow the article got way more traction than i had anticipated and people from all over the world going through the same thing in different fields reached out and connected. it was heartening, encouraging and is the kind of thing that makes you go “fuck yeah!'“
Foreword: After being regularly employed as a creative for the last 4 years, I got laid off last week. It's the first time for me so to celebrate this popping of the lay-off cherry, I thought I'd write an overly long article to walk you through the process so you can see if getting laid off is right for you! Wait, no. That's not right...
So without further ado, let's kick it off. And before you ask: No. I don't have anything better to do right now. I'm unemployed, remember?
CHAPTER 1: 60-80 minutes after getting laid off.
You walk out of your office carrying your belongings in a cardboard box and after waving goodbye to that one receptionist who always remembers your name, you step into the outside world at a reasonable hour for the first time in recent memory. The sun, which you've long forgotten about by now, beats down on you and you look up quizically, thinking to yourself, "What is this fiery, whitish red orb?!" You wonder what precise color it is in the Adobe RGB spectrum so you stare directly into it and it blinds you, causing you to drop the box and shatter the vase of that plant that one coworker gave you for your birthday that one year. The sight of the shattered glass and wet pebbles stirs your memory and gets you thinking: "I hear he's an ACD now at [insert agency here]", you tell yourself. "Maybe I can reach out to him." You clean up the mess, walk to that fancy car you're leasing, toss the box in the back and hop inside. That familiar, comforting scent of new cowskin seats calms your nerves. You look around the austere yet luxurious cabin and tell yourself that it's all right, everything will be okay. But then a nagging voice rudely interrupts your reverie with the fact that you can no longer afford this lease. Your daydream becomes a daynightmare, which leads us to...
CHAPTER 2: 80-120 minutes after getting laid off.
On the drive home, you start panicking about the Money Situation. That severance you were tallying up in your mind when HR gave you the news - the severance you predicted you could live off for a few months. Yeah, well, when you're driving back home in your fancy leased German car, you realize that your severance ain't gonna cut it. So now you begin playing a number's game: how far can you stretch your finances? You give yourself a headache thinking about it. After all, you were never good at math or being realistic (ergo you landed a job as a Creative with a capital "C"). You tell yourself you'll think about it later. You push it aside and floor it - the big, burly, high horsepower roar of your leased German car's engine resonates in your ears like Pavarotti singing the tragic tale of Pagliacci. You go to pass that slowpoke Prius in front of you, showing them who's the real boss of this road. You stare them down as you pass and say to yourself, "Fuckin' square. They probably work for a living." You start reveling in your freedom - you're living outside the norm, you're unemployed and making it look damn good. You speed all the way home - the cops can't touch you. Not today. You then look at your gas gauge and discover that due to your "enthusiastic" driving, your MPGs have plummeted and you're burning through more fuel than the plane that Indy, Short Round and Willie found themselves in before crashing in India. (See, in 'Temple of Doom', the trio were getting flown out of Shanghai in the back of a chicken transport to escape the wrath of a gangster named Lao Che who tried to steal the ashes of Nurhaci from Dr. Jones. Indy and co. then found a last-minute flight out of Shanghai but much to their chagrin (and a heaping side order of dramatic irony) the transport was owned by Lao's company so his pilots dumped all the fuel and jumped out of the plane, taking all the parachutes with them, while the three protagonists were sleeping in the back, unaware that their flight was losing altitude and sputtering them along to a certain death. Luckily, the eponymous hero, Indiana Jones, woke up in time and successfully saved his sidekicks from the deadly crash using an inflatable lifeboat as a makeshift parachute.) Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that you now find yourself thinking of gas mileage and prices, which was something you last did when you were making minimum wage. You start keeping an eye out for Arcos and make a mental note to burn your Shell or Chevron cards.
CHAPTER 3: 120-140 minutes after getting laid off.
You get home to your expensive-ass condo where other young, white, advertising and tech professionals live. You know, the kind of condos that are modeled after artist lofts but where no artists live and all the appliances are stainless steel and new. You walk inside and sit down on your Crate and Barrel couch. You look around and think to yourself that now, after three years of living there, you can finally start making it feel like home. You brush aside the cruel irony of it all - that you'll finally move in just when your landlord kicks you out for not being able to afford the ever increasing rent anymore. (Because you got laid off, if you forgot.)
CHAPTER 4: 300-310 minutes after getting laid off.
You panic (again) about the money. How will you afford your 5 dollar daily coffee and the 3 dollar parking for said 5 dollar coffee anymore? How will you be able to take your girlfriend to that new restaurant you said you'd take her to? You know, the one that does the fish and stuff. You feel your chest constrict and think, "is this a heart attack?" You then think about your insurance and how it'll run out in a few days. The stress becomes overwhelming and you find that pacing up and down those beautiful reclaimed wood stairs in your fake artist loft isn't relieving your anxiety so you do the only thing left to do: open your fridge and drink one of the three bottles of Pliny the Elder you have stockpiled away. As you gulp down the hoppy, skunky, disgusting Imperial IPA that you only bought because it was expensive, you gaze intently at the other two bottles: you could sell those. There are buyers. You could turn that fermented beverage into cold, hard cash. You then frantically look around your apartment tallying up other things you can sell like you're Liam Neeson. No, not Liam Neeson from The Grey, but from that other movie. The black and white one.
CHAPTER 5: 310-550 minutes after getting laid off.
Your co-workers text you to come out for some going-away drinks so you hit that one bar that straddles the line between hip and dive-y that all work functions seem to be held at. You're then met with a barrage of well-wishes from people whose faces you've seen around the office but never really spoken to. Your mind races and reels: "Who are all these people?" You down a drink. "Should I connect with them on LinkedIn?" You down another drink. "Wait, how can I do that if I don't know their names?" Some shots then appear in front of you - you don't remember ordering them, must have been that one person in the creative department whose motto is "I'd rather burn out than never get lit." You look around the bar to thank them but by now everyone's face is a blur and the noise in the bar has reached a cacophanous critical mass of drunken shrieking and trap music. You down the shot. Your last memory before waking up the next morning is telling someone you may or may not have worked with, "THIS IS FREEDOM!" You also may have ripped your shirt and/or pants off for no apparent reason.
CHAPTER 6: 550-970 minutes after getting laid off.
You sleep in your bed, that one co-worker's bed - the one you've fancied for years, or in the back seat of your Uber. Your mileage may vary during this chapter.
CHAPTER 7: 970-1090 minutes after getting laid off.
You awaken, breathing the free air that only a person freed from the shackles of gainful employment can breathe. "Kind of stale", you think to yourself. Must have forgotten to open a window last night. In any case, you sit in bed reveling in the fact that there is not a single place you have to be today. You want to go to the beach? You can do it! You want to get drunk for breakfast? Even better! The choices are limitless, you tell yourself. But then the cruel mistress of paralytic ennui sets in: with so much freedom, so much choice, what do you do? After contemplating the choices for a while in silent pensivity, the answer hits you in a moment of clarity: you'll stay in bed and watch some videos on YouTube! You heroically pull out your iPad (because that job you had took back the laptop they gave you), brandishing it in one hand, dusting it off with the other and you flip it on: nothing happens. The battery's dead. Shit. You haven't charged it in years because you had no need. You then resolve to take a day trip somewhere. I mean, why not, right? The world is your figurative oyster right now! You shouldn't just squander that away in bed, on your iPad. So you tell yourself "Yes!" to "Day trip: Destination Unknown." You just need a little more rest, so you put your head back down on your pillow.
CHAPTER 8: 1090-1330 minutes after getting laid off.
You're still in bed. That day trip gets more unlikely with every passing minute. Your iPad is charged to 50% now so you start watching the shit out of those YouTube videos, only breaking to aimlessly scroll through LinkedIn, silently praying for that magic bullet job opening. You begin to panic again, "Will I have to go back to working in a restaurant?" You entertain the possibility of hitting your friend up who manages that one cool restaurant on that one hip street in town. You know, the one you always would see your ECDs and CCO at. You then think of how embarrassing that would be - to be their server after working alongside them for all this time. You find yourself shaking your head at this internal dialogue, brush the restaurant thought aside and get back to scrolling through the many job openings on LinkedIn. You apply to some but at this point, you're the 776th application to come in. "Maybe they read the applications last to first?" you say to yourself. Unlikely. You put the iPad away and try to think clearly about it all now that the dust has settled a bit.
CHAPTER 9: 1330-indefinite minutes after getting laid off.
After quiet contemplation, you resolve by telling yourself that it's not all bad. Every creative (hell, every person) goes through this at some point in their careers. Whether due to the loss of a big client or because you pissed yourself in a client meeting, everyone will find themselves unemployed at some point. You take a big sigh and an even bigger gulp of whiskey (Bulleit, probably, because you're cutting back on your expenses now) and decide to use your anxiety as an accelerant - a fuel to get you to burn brighter than you were before. It's not easy and without mincing words, it abso-fucking-lutely sucks. But it, like every other shitty roadblock in life, is just one giant learning experience. And seeing as you've got nothing else going on in your life at that point, be sure to capitalize on it.
I know I'm trying to.
CHAPTER 10: Note from the author.
If you read this whole thing, then first off I want to say thanks. Secondly, I want to ask "Why? What's wrong with you, you obvious psycho?" And thirdly, I want to put it out there that I'm a writer who's currently available for hire both freelance and full-time. So if you want, check out my work at mrloganobrien.com
(My publicist* told me I should use this as an opportunity to shamelessly promote myself.)
*I use the term "publicist" loosely. Bartender may be the more apt word, actually. But eh; six of one, half a dozen of the other, right?