I was let go on a Thursday morning at eleven forty-five. My manager called me into the small conference room, the one with the broken blinds that nobody had fixed in three years, and told me that the company was going in a different direction and my position was being eliminated. I was sixty-one years old. I had worked there for fourteen years.
He said it carefully and quickly, the way people say things they have been coached to say by HR, and when he finished he slid a folder across the table with my severance information and a form to sign. The form had a line for my signature acknowledging that I understood the termination was not performance-related.
I understood completely. It had never been about performance. I had consistently outperformed colleagues ten and fifteen years younger than me. I had the reviews to prove it. The real reason my position was being eliminated was standing in the hallway outside the conference room – a 29-year-old who had been hired three months earlier at a salary thirty percent lower than mine and given a title that was almost identical to the one being removed from my business card.
I signed nothing that day. I thanked my manager calmly, collected the folder, and drove home.
That afternoon I called an employment attorney.
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