Well, here’s how it is, Honey

This is why the new-age corporate culture of “We’re a big family” and “We care about our team members” was never a good idea. I once worked at an agency where my manager (a lady) was all hyped up and gave me a huge hug when greeting me on my first day. Same agency that overworked its employees and kept an abysmal assistant of mine on staff–despite my protesting–for 8 months before firing her, and then fired me after her mistakes affected our team’s performance (they made sure I finished the big quarterly report first, though).

But hey, we got free burgers for lunch every Friday!

At my current agency, months into the pandemic, they had to start laying people off to control for costs. My supervisor, who often got migraines from the amount of work he put in, had recently moved to California to work remotely. About two days after he moved, with no friends or family to help him out over there, he got let go. Not due to performance. In fact, we were told people would be chosen at random, at all levels, to “keep things fair.” Somehow that didn’t include any of the C-suite employees. When our agency started getting back on its feet, not one person they laid off got hired back. They had tons of money to splurge on DEI consultants and ESG goals, though.

Unless you’re an executive at your company making important decisions, you should not be using the words “I” and “valued” in the same sentence. Corporations do not care about you. They will fire you at the drop of a hat and lose your number.

People who expect to be valued at corporations are akin to people who cry during campaign speeches, or high school pep rally speeches, for that matter.

14 weeks severance? That’s pretty generous.