Change or So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Every year, our CEO picks a theme for the company and presents it at our annual staff meeting. This year's theme is "Change" and it's overwhelmingly accurate. The company sold off some of our core business and has plans to sell another division, too.

What does that mean? Well, a large chunk of our salespeople and a few operations peeps moved to the company that bought our business. Their last day with us was May 11. Because the support requirements of the overall business will be much smaller, another contingent of operations personnel left on May 25. A few people are staying a little longer for clean up before they, too, depart.

I'm in that last group.

My absolutely last day will be June 29. I would suggest "surreal" may be another theme as I've been here for over 19 years and it's so strange to think I won't be driving through the gates every day and settling in at my tchotchke filled desk. (I've already taken home two bags of stuff and several more trips will be required to get the rest.)

Before you get all up in arms in my defense (because my friends are cool that way), it's all good. For those of us in eliminated positions, we were given plenty of notice and generous severance packages. And, treated with a great deal of respect and care. It certainly wasn't an easy decision for our management but I can't disagree with why they made that decision.

I'll always be grateful for the many opportunities from my time here. The chance to directly see the value I added, travel that allowed me to become an almost Canadian and a European place name dropper, opportunity to learn new skills, direct access to Senior Management and knowing that my voice was heard, flexibility and compassion when I needed to care for my parents, being surrounded by my core group of nerds and geeks...the list of gratitudes is long.

Being the extroverted social butterfly that I am, the thing I'm most grateful for is knowing the fine people I worked with. I've made friends that will always be in my life. I know that because some stopped working here years ago and they're still people I hang out with. Heck, some have left and come back and one is leaving again and we will continue to see each other.

All of the following pictures represent great memories and great times. I love that they're only going back a few months and that there were so many more I could have chosen. We really do like spending time with each other.

Our last big Happy Hour.

Afternoon beers on an early out day.

Out with the Sales team after their annual awards celebration.

Spring Training.
Corporate golf shirts through the years.

Golf tournament shenanigans.
#greatestfoursomeever

Company picnic.

Yes, there's an element of melancholy. I truly enjoyed my time here. I absolutely loved being "the" expert on many things. It could be intimidating going into a new environment and not know how it all works but I'm choosing to look at it as a challenge. I loves me a challenge!

Thanks for the memories, SmartPractice. More importantly, thanks for the friends!

Comments

fillikir72518 said…
I’m impressed, I must say. Really hardly ever do I encounter a blog that’s each educative and entertaining, and let me let you know, you've gotten hit the nail on the head. Your thought is excellent; the issue is one thing that not sufficient individuals are talking intelligently about. I am very blissful that I stumbled across this in my search for something referring to this. slots for real money
5:18 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TV At Its Finest

I was talking to someone today who didn’t know who Bob Newhart was. I cut him some slack because he’s a youngster and didn’t grow up in the U.S. I told him about The Bob Newhart show and how it became a college drinking game and about Newhart, "Hi, I'm Larry; this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl." He was going to go to Wikipedia and do some research. The conversation got me thinking. Back in the day (like when dinosaurs were alive and I was young and there were only four channels on TV), we caught a lot of reruns of what are now considered classic TV. Especially, if you were a latchkey kid like I was, there wasn’t a lot going on in the afternoon/early evening so it was either soap operas or reruns unless you were allowed to be outside and play. And, of course, during summer vacation you had even more time to watch the boob tube. Here’s what I remember watching during those years: Gilligan’s Island, Big Valley (I’m still looking for my very own N...
Read more

February 2020

Image
Most of 2020 sucked. But, there were some good moments that made memories to cling to. I'm going to review some of those moments from each month. (Disclaimer - my memory isn't what it used to be so this is my story and I'm sticking to it regardless of reality.) I moved into my house in May of 2019 and it was already hot out so I used the Arizona summer as an excuse not to do anything to my patio or yard. I don't recall what excuse I used to justify ignoring the both in the fall and winter. Let's go with complete laziness. It's entirely plausible. However, I had to get on the stick and pretty it up because I had a bunch of company scheduled for the spring. The first thing I did was get some inexpensive chairs from Target for my beat up table. I honestly thought I could jam them into my car. I really, really did. One would never guess I was a Tetris master. After several futile attempts, this is how it ultimately went down. Adam (answering cell): Hi, Kathy! Me: Hi...
Read more