Deborah, a content strategist from Boston, wishes she’d had a different reaction when her boss told her she was being laid off. “I wept,” said Deborah, who didn’t want her last name mentioned. “Not uncontrollable sobbing, but tears streaming.”
The fact that she didn’t accept the news “with poise and dignity” still makes her cringe a little today.
“Instead I had to take advantage of the strategically placed box of tissues and ask for a few extra minutes to ‘pull myself together,'” said Deborah, who’d been with the company more than a decade and was completely blindsided when she was let go. “And of course, when I returned to my desk and shared the news, the tears kicked in again. For the next 30 minutes or so, I really was inconsolable.”