The Big Change in ’15
Man, 2015. November of 2015, specifically. That month was supposed to be just another blur of airport lounges and deadlines. I was grinding, right? Five years into that Senior Analyst gig—always on the road, always chasing the next quarter. I figured I was set. Pension plan looked solid, the title felt heavy. I thought that was the game, you know? Just keep pushing the rock up the hill. I was comfortable, maybe too comfortable. That whole decision thing, it just speaks to that moment when you hit a wall and suddenly everything flips. It wasn’t about the stars, it was about a shock that knocked me right off the tracks.
The Cracks Start Showing
I’m telling you, I was clocking ninety hours a week easy. They loved me. I was the guy who could fly to Chicago on Monday, close the deal by Wednesday, and be setting up the next one in Dallas before Friday lunch. I was practically living out of a suitcase. Then, late October rolled around, and my kid got hit with something nasty. ER visit, fast. It wasn’t life-threatening, but it was scary, and the doctor said flat out: “You need a week, minimal, no stress.”
I called the partner, the big cheese, and explained. He gave me the nod, the usual corporate “family first” spiel. I shut down the laptop, didn’t check email for seven full days. I focused on my family, cooked terrible meals, and just breathed. It was the first proper break I’d taken in years. I felt like a human again. I had cleared my desk, tied up all the loose ends before I walked out that door, so I figured everything was cool. I gave them plenty of notice, even pre-written some of the reports they’d need while I was gone. I was trying to be the perfect employee, right up to the minute I needed time for a real life thing.
The Erase Button
The first Monday of November, I woke up ready to dive back into the chaos. Felt guilty, even. I drove to the office at 6 AM, planning to be the hero, clear the backlog before anyone else showed up. I walked up to the turnstile, swiped my badge, and nothing. Tried it again. Nothing. The little red light blinked at me, mocking me. I thought the thing was just broken. I called security, and they came over, looked at the screen, and just shrugged. “Sir,” the guy said, “your access is deactivated. There’s no note here. You need to call HR.”
This is where it gets crazy. I walked around to the employee entrance, hammered the HR extension, no answer. Voicemail full. I tried my direct supervisor, my mentor, the guy I’d shared a million beers with on the road. All of them. My calls went straight to voicemail, or worse, they answered and immediately mumbled, “Wrong number, sorry,” before slamming the phone down. I even messaged a couple of guys I worked with side-by-side, asking what was going on, and they just left me on read. Like I was a ghost or something contagious.
I sat in the parking lot for two hours, watching the sun come up. I was looking at the building where I’d given five years of my life, and suddenly, I didn’t exist. I checked the company’s internal system on my phone—my profile was gone. Just a blank space where my name used to be. They had just quietly wiped me out while I was sitting by my kid’s hospital bed. No warning, no letter, no email. Nothing. I felt this instant, cold anger, because I knew exactly why they did it: I had shown them I had priorities besides their profit margin.
The Immediate Scramble
The paycheck was supposed to hit that Friday. It never did. The bank account was suddenly just watching the balance shrink. My wife, she was already pissed at the hours I was working, and now we had zero income, and medical bills were starting to roll in. That feeling of hitting rock bottom, man, it’s not Hollywood drama. It’s just a cold, quiet dread. We lived on frozen pizzas and whatever cash we had stashed in a desk drawer. I spent two weeks calling lawyers and benefit counselors, trying to figure out what they hell they could legally pull off. Turns out, they had technically put me on unpaid administrative leave but never told me, and then just ghosted the entire process. They thought they could let me wither and come crawling back when they needed me. It was dirty, a real low blow.
The Flip and the Follow-Through
That Nov 2015 decision wasn’t about finding a new job; it was about burning the corporate idea to the ground. I looked at what they did, and I knew I couldn’t ever give that much energy to people who would treat me like an inconvenience the second I prioritized my family. That was the “Major Decisions Now!” moment. I realized that the only person I could trust to put my family first was me. I needed control over the whole operation.
I didn’t apply for another suit-and-tie gig. Instead, I pulled all my contacts—the real ones, the people I helped who weren’t inside that company—and I pitched a totally new idea. Independent consulting, small scale, high-value contracts. I didn’t want a boss, I wanted clients. I grabbed my old contact list, the one I kept manually, and started dialing. I started talking, being honest about what happened, and people respected the story more than they respected my old title.
- I spent December setting up the LLC and the terrible home office, figuring out taxes and billing from scratch.
- January was nothing but cold calls and hustling, telling everyone what had happened and what I could do for them now.
- By February, I landed my first small contract, enough to cover the mortgage and stop checking the savings account every five minutes.
- By the summer, I was busier and making more money than I was before I got canned, and I was home for dinner four nights a week.
The beautiful part? About six months after I’d totally vanished, my old company—the partner who had “loved” me—started calling. They were suddenly in deep water; the big deal I was closing was falling apart without me. They kept calling, first HR, then my old supervisor, even the partner himself. The voicemails got more and more desperate, suddenly talking about my “long-term value” and “reinstatement.”
I listened to the first two, just to hear the panic. Then I just blocked every single number. Every one of them. They had their chance to be human in November 2015. I learned a brutal, expensive lesson that month, but I finally realized that my career wasn’t about the company logo; it was about the control I could grab back. And I grabbed it.
