There I was, feeling fortunate to have a fairly good-paying job at a small but growing company where I could be creative and where my opinion sort of counted when decisions about certain things needed to be made. The work pace was good, the goals and initiatives fair, the clients easy to work with and very appreciative and the work hours were flexible. Oh, and even my co-workers were nice to be around (although, thankfully, I had my own office where I could get away from my dear, dear co-workers when I’d had enough).

We just went through a rather painful process of changing our 401K plan and payroll from one plan administrator to another, for which the decision to change was at my urging and therefore I had to do some of the major legwork on making the change happen. I recently celebrated my fifth year with the company, was one year away from being fully vested in the employer-contribution portion of the aforementioned 401K and just got another week of vacation. On top of working on a new, high-profile project, getting a great review and decent raise (after some haggling) and recently receiving the “President”s Award’ for outstanding performance for the prior year, I was feeling pretty confident that all was well in work-land.

And then it happened….the president of the company (my boss, friend and mentor), had to make a decision about what direction the company was going to take for the rest of 2008 and beyond. Things weren’t looking too profitable for one portion of the business (a portion that really didn’t affect me…or so I thought) and the president needed to take a good, hard look at what had to be done. So, whatever the corporate buzz-word du jour: re-structure, re-organize, re-evaluate…it all boiled down to one thing for me….RE-JECTED.

Yup, five years of doing a great job. Five years of helping grow the company. Five years of putting up with a true entrepreneur (whose mind and direction would change at least 235,000 times each and every day – ok, I’m exaggerting, more like 234,999 times a day). Five years of true professionalism, dedication, hard work, creativity. All gone within 5 minutes. The words still echo in my head….”due to the restructuring plan, we no longer need your department nor your skills.” I’m sorry….WHAT?

Now, mind you, I knew things were changing. I was well aware that people’s jobs were being “re-evaluated.” But, I also knew where the holes in the organization were (literally and figuratively) and I really didn’t think I was one of those holes. As Director of Products and Services, I managed the busiest side of the business – which, in a nutshell, was working with our clients daily, managing all company seminars, events and trade shows, developing new content, editing all publications, updating courseware, managing schedules, writing a monthly newsletter, making sure my boss was always prepared for events, making sure everyone knew where they were supposed to be, etc., etc., etc.