August!
Starting in October I would be returning to work. I really wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I returned as they had me hand off all of my active projects to other people while I was out. Makes sense, just not the most secure I’d ever felt about doing. Well, it was during August when I got a call from Ashima (my supervisor) at American Express. She was rather quick to the point. “Hey Jason, just wanted to let you know that we are going to be displacing your job”
What? Displacing my job? “Yes, we will be able to absorb the job now that we have new people on our team in India, and so we will not need you to return to your role”
She also mentioned that none of this would take effect until I returned from leave. At that point, I would have a certain time (30 days? or something) to find another role. If I couldn’t land another role within Amex I would be given a severance package equivalent to a few months of regular pay.
Talk about a gut punch. I have a newborn. I just bought a house last year and a car (which was thankfully paid in full). What should I do? I started to do this thing that we in my family call “pancaking” it really means that you stack one problem on top of another problem like a stack of pancakes.
Okay, okay – let’s get out of town (which was already planned as we had an annual Calimigos ranch trip planned).
Well, when we were in town we said let’s do something else too. Something to really take our minds off of all of this bad news.
Why not Disneyland? Sure, a 2-day ticket. Arabella would get in free, and so would Elijah. It would be the last time Ara would have this chance. Lets do it!
As you can see from these photos we had a blast. It was so ad-hoc that we went and purchased walking shoes while we were in LA (only at Walmart, nothing too fancy).
This was the last time we went to Calimigos Ranch and we made it count. We went every year and even before Ara was born. This time we walked around the ranch and even saw the place they grow their wine.
We didn’t spend much more time than planned in California – in fact, we were there for about 4 days. went to California Adventure on one day, Calimigos on the 2nd, Disneyland on the 3rd, and rested before the drive home on the 4th day.
What a time! We decided that we would continue to post for jobs at Amex and continue to pray about what to do. Until next time..
just Pray
note: this post was published on 07/29/22 but moved the publish date back to the end of August 2017 to keep chronological order.
