I never thought I would ever say this, but my husband lost his job. 

I want to preface this post with the fact that this post was originally written in January 2019. A Lot has happened since then.

You can read more about our experience of moving through and rising above this experience in part two.

I know may people are dealing with job loss right now due to the pandemic, so I thought it was only fitting to share our full story.

On Thursday afternoon, January 24th, 2019, I was hiding in my basement because our cleaning ladies were over. I wasn’t hiding from the cleaning ladies exactly, I just needed to find a quiet place to work away from the friendly chatter and blast of a vacuum every now and again.

It costs $100 every two weeks to have them come. 3 people come and within a few hours our house is completely clean from top to bottom. I’m somewhat frugal, so the thought of paying money for services I could do myself has always been somewhat difficult for me. But ultimately, it was one less thing on my plate and having them come allowed for more time doing the things that make me happy (cleaning not being one of them). The time savings and feeling we get coming into our freshly cleaned home was worth every single penny

Okay sorry, I went off on a tangent there. Back to hiding in my basement.

My husband lost his job - What!?

My cell phone rang and it was my husband Steve.

“So…I was just fired” he said in a somewhat confused tone. “Are you fucking kidding me!?” I’m pretty sure was my response. If it wasn’t, it should have been.

A few days out from his 90-day probationary period at his new, promising job. “Why? What was their reasoning?” I asked. “They wouldn’t give me a reason” he said with a sigh. And that was that.

In Canada you don’t need a valid reason to fire someone during their probationary period. Heck, you can get fired at any time without cause as long as your employer pays you the necessary severance, typically 1 week for every year worked. 

No reason given, after being enticed away from a job he had started only 8 weeks before with the promise of a better title, more money, and opportunity for future growth. 

We knew it was a risk…taking a newly created management position, but this was an opportunity that made sense. He had put in the time and energy for years improving his skill sets for a role just like this one. Things seemed to be rolling in his favour and it didn’t make sense to turn it down. Damn, we even celebrated!  

His surprising phone call Thursday afternoon was the hard reality that risks don’t always pan out the way you hope or plan. And you know what? That’s okay! We like to think we have control over much of our life but the facts are we definitely don’t.

Very Few Things are in our Control

There are a lot of things you can’t control in life. Actually, I believe most things are out of our control.

A lot of people have said “Something better will come along” or “Don’t worry! Things will work out – they always do!”. If you’ve said those things to me, I know you mean well, or you have been faced with a similar situation and everything worked out for the best. While I don’t think the universe is magically going to align for us, I do think that life unfolds the way that it is supposed to.

Trust your wings

There’s the saying that says “A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not on the branch but on her own wings”.

This quote has been comforting to me over these long, past few days. I have complete trust in our own ability to recover from this job loss.

Steve has been employed since he was 11 years old picking vegetables in a Southwestern Ontario farmer’s field. He spent years as a bag boy at Zehr’s in St. Thomas, Ontario packing groceries and bringing them to people’s cars for them. Always, with a friendly smile on his face.

He is an educated Manufacturing Engineer that has worked in every area of metal fabrication, and with his knowledgebase could open up his own facility tomorrow (if we were rolling in cash that is). 

I’m proud of Steve and I want him to be proud of himself.

He’s the type of guy that has the respect of the people who work for him, which say so much about the way he conducts himself in the workplace. In fact, he still goes out of his way to connect with past co-workers because he genuinely cares about the people he works with.

At the end of the day, business is business and sometimes it’s difficult not to take things personally. Especially with two young children at home to provide for.

We’ve gone through a number of emotions from disbelief, embarrassment, frustration, and anger. There have been sleepless nights and worry which I am sure, if allowed to grow would make the following weeks and months challenging for us as a couple.

Moving Forward After Job Loss

It took a few days for us to collect ourselves and our emotions. But we implemented some necessary changes to move through this period of unemployment with our heads held high.

I looked at our financial situation in depth and created a cash budget for us to follow.

Okay, we’re not going to starve. Perfect.

We can pay our mortgage. Thank God.

Financially we’re not in trouble, we can live off the EI payments and if that runs out, we’ll tap into our emergency fund savings. 

His resume and cover letter, to be customized for each potential role, has been updated and he’s already applied to a few jobs. 

Employment Insurance will be applied for this week which we have never needed to do before (except for my maternity leave). It will keep us afloat for the next 9 months if it has to, but let’s plan on far less time shall we!?

The Bright Side of Job Loss

In the meantime, we’ll enjoy the new-found time we have with Steve. He was able to bring cupcakes into Carter’s class today for his 5th birthday which is something he wouldn’t have skipped out on work for before. He’s going to hit the gym like it’s his job and we will stay positive about the situation.

We’re not blind to the fact that we have our health to be grateful for and our basic needs are being met, and then some.

As for those cleaning ladies, I had to let them go, obviously, but I look forward to the day we can hire them back.

Have you had an experience with job loss? I’d love to hear your advice!

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