Over the weekend, I pushed my personal website live and updated my LinkedIn profile, switching it to actively searching mode.
I figured my holiday pay would cover a couple weeks of downtime before I had to go diving back into the workforce.
On Monday morning, I took my dog for a long walk in spring sunshine.
I stopped for coffee at a local cafe and let myself enjoy something I hadn’t had in months:
Freedom without guilt.
My phone started ringing.
One of the salespeople from my old company.
I ignored it.
Then another call.
Then another.
By the time I got home, I had eight or ten missed calls.
The crap had truly hit the windmill.
I checked voicemails and ignored the ones I recognized.
I returned calls from two ex-clients to tell them my contract had ended and to check in with Dan for work in progress or contact the tech provider for support requests.
Then I got a call from a contact at the recruitment technology provider—the same people I’d quietly built relationships with while Dan mocked “digital.”
He’d been fielding support calls I normally handled.
He listened as I explained the situation, then said he’d call me back.
Ten minutes later he called again—this time with the head of product on the line.
She asked, casually, what my lunch preferences were.
She met me at a nearby Thai place and, over a red duck curry, described the wonders of life as a contractor.
She mentioned day rates for highly qualified, industry-certified staff.
She also mentioned they were struggling to find people like that.
Then she gave me the number of a recruiter.
I called the recruiter on the way home.
Meanwhile, my collection of voicemails from Dan was growing by the hour.
HR’s Text
At some point that afternoon, HR must have realized what happened.
I got a polite text from a personal number—regional HR director—asking if I was available for a quick chat.
I called.
I explained the options Dan presented to me on Friday and that I felt I had no choice but to follow his instructions.
There was a pause while HR processed what they’d just heard.
They probed for more information, and it became obvious they hadn’t been told Dan had issued an ultimatum without engaging HR.
Then HR said something that made me laugh once—quietly, without humor.
“To benefit from the sale of your shares,” she said, “you would need to transfer to the new company and remain employed for a full year.”
I stayed calm.
“I have no shares,” I said.
Four seconds of silence.
The kind of silence that tells you someone just realized a second secret.
It turned out HR also hadn’t been told I’d been excluded from the share pool.
I mentioned I’d appreciate Dan discontinuing his voicemails because I found them unprofessional and had no intent of recommencing employment under his management.
We ended the call politely.
At 11 p.m. that evening, my new contract from the tech provider arrived.
I signed and returned it the next day.
I was deployed to a client site that Wednesday.
By then, Dan’s problem had become the company’s problem.
And the company had started doing math.
“Where Did They Go?”
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