The hours leading up to that moment at the door had been a lot more complex emotionally than I had expected them to be. By nature, I am the kind of person who would just as soon fade away than have to say goodbyes. I never really know what to say when someone else leaves or when I leave. As the day goes on, I find that I get worse and worse at it since I use up most of my best lines early on ("Best" being a highly relative term). It felt like a thirty-foot band-aid that was being slowly pulled off as the day progressed and there was some raw emotion underneath it. While I am 110% sure of the direction that I am going, I can;t help but feel like a soldier who has led his team into a battle and is now pulling himself out. While I take solace from the fact that my team is well equipped to win and I was able to hand-pick a great new leader for them, it doesn't erase the guilt. As I looked into their eyes throughout the day, I suspect that they could see what I was feeling.
Despite the personal emotions that I was dealing with, my team and the extended members of it, put a lot of effort into making me feel like my time at Verigy meant something. I had never seen or felt anything like it before. For starters, they had arranged a going away lunch at a local vegan restaurant, Merit Vegetarian. They had been scouting out locations on the sly and happened to stumble upon one of my favorites. The lunch coordinators even facilitated a late change of dates in order to take advantage of the fact that the restaurant was holding a benefit for the victims of the Japan earthquake. It was great to see so many of the faces of people who I had worked with in my time there and there were even some "blasts from the past". I was very moved that they chose to be there.
The meal was great, except for some delays on some of the orders due to the volume of business that day, and I think it gave a lot of people their first exposure to the breakthroughs in vegan cuisine (It's not just carrots and sticks anymore). At the end of the lunch, a member of my team shared some kind words and presented me with a box of gifts. Since these were in company boxes, there were the requisite jokes about how they had found a new use for scrap parts as souvenirs. As I looked at the box of wrapped gifts, there was a somberness to the moment that went beyond just the appreciation for the thought and my feelings of being among these great people. I would have been fine without anything since the lunch was enough, but now that I had these in my arms, I wondered how well the people I work with knew me. While I am a firm believer that it is the thought that counts (Which is why I have kept so many clothes from Lori that I don't wear), I think we all have experienced gifts that are misses and those which are home-runs.
The card was the first thing I opened, but I couldn't read it there without risking losing my composure. That would have to wait until I got home. Starting with the first box, it was clear that that this was going to be headed for McCovey Cove. As I continued with them, there was a theme that showed how much the team really got me and how much effort they put into it.
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| My new work ensemble: Vegan coveralls, gloves, hat, and boots. |
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| Coveralls emblazoned with my website's logo. |
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| They also added my name and new home. |
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| Hopefully this was in recognition of my cool headedness. |
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| New non-leather rugged work boots. |
As the team explained how they had selected the items, it was amusing to realize how they had been scouting me out. I play racquetball every week with one of my team members and when he had been steering the conversation toward racquetball gloves, he had been trying to learn my glove size. His keen interest in the past perils of my shoe-sizing suddenly made a lot more sense than it had at the time (I used to wear a shoe-size that was one and a half two big on account of my wide "Fred Flintstone" feet and hadn't realized this until I went to buy my first dress clothes...at age twenty-seven).
All of the thought that went into this and the execution of the lunch made what I was feeling even harder to bear. It is only now, a couple days later that I can read the card and really sit down and try to put what I was feeling to electronic paper. At lunch, I had borrowed the Peace Corps motto of, "It's the toughest job you'll ever love" to try to express it, and it works just as well right now. It was in that moment, that this feeling crystallized. While I found myself smiling a lot more often as the days wound down, there had been a lot of smiles all along. Sure, we may have become battle-hardened, but between battles we enjoyed each others company and in the midst of the fire-fights, we had looked to each other for support. Along with my new found realization about loving the job, I know that I will never be going back to my old company. It was/is the people who make it special and once you remove yourself from that, it is never possible to really go back. People come and go and change and the dynamic will never be quite the same. It is with that sentiment that I make a closing commentary for anyone who actually reads this.
Recently I have become interested in World War II documentaries. I have marvelled at the bravery of those who fought the good fight and often lost their lives in the process. As I watched these, I started to realize the importance of perspective. These acts of selflessness and bravery are profound when viewed today, but I would contend they are all the more potent when you imagine that the outcomes weren't known when all of this was going on. While acknowledging that there is no direct comparison between this and what is going on at my old company, I believe that there is an indirect one. The M&A activity that is going on right now is public knowledge and anyone who has ever been through this knows the uncertainty that this brings. If I have learned anything from those documentaries, it is that true greatness comes from the ability, ne the desire, to go "once more unto the breach" and face the challenges that life throws at you regardless of the unknown future. This test of mettle is ultimately more important than any one job since it means that you are indeed worthy of any job.
