Three months later, I ran into one of the old IT guys at a conference.
He looked like a man who’d just watched a slow-motion car crash and still couldn’t believe it had happened.
He was practically vibrating with excitement to tell me what went down after I left.
“The first notice anyone got,” he said, “was the service desk asking who they should route your LastPass account to and why you were passing it around.”
Someone went looking for me and found an empty desk.
They asked around where I’d moved.
No one knew.
So the tech went to Dan’s desk and found my laptop with my ID and a Post-it note taped to it.
Then he checked access logs and realized the last time I’d logged in was Friday.
He locked my account for security purposes.
Then he went to HR to check if there was a leaver form.
HR checked—no leaver form—and a big red cross next to my employment.
Contract received.
So HR called Dan.
Dan wasn’t in the office.
He told them, “No, no, the contract should be on my desk. It was there on Friday. I’m out on the road. Give me until lunch and I’ll sort it out.”
He thought I was disobeying him.
So he started calling me.
Leaving voicemails.
Getting more agitated with each hour that passed.
When he finally came into the office and couldn’t find the contract, he went to HR and tried to spin it.
He claimed I’d been stonewalling them, but it was “between me and him.”
HR’s response was simple:
“No. This is our thing now.”
That was when they sent me the text.
According to IT, shortly after my phone conversation with HR, the HR director walked into a sales meeting and abruptly pulled Dan out.
They disappeared into a meeting room.
And though my IT buddy couldn’t hear what was said, he described Dan’s face afterward like someone had scraped the shine off it.
The Collapse
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