Being Laid Off or Fired Doesn’t Define Who You Are

I would rank 2013 as probably one of the worst years of my life.

First, I got laid off as my job as a web designer from the Follett Higher Education Group. They are the largest operator of college and university bookstores in North America, with some 1400 locations.

Maybe it would not have hurt so bad if this had not been my third layoff, once after the dot.com crash of 2000, and the other when print news subscriptions started plummeting in the mid 2000s when I worked for the Tribune Corporation (owner of The Chicago Tribune, Newsday, The LA Times and at the time WGN TV).

A confluence of events like gross mismanagement, being very slow to adjust to a new digital world of e-Readers and textbook rental, an outdated website lacking in demand features, rising competitors like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Chegg and a lag from the Great Recession led to mass layoffs, and I was a part of it. While the job was full of headaches and no clear career path or upward mobility, I loved the team I worked on, and made some lifelong friends after 7 years of service.

A few months later, I was hired as a web designer at the Illinois College of Optometry, which was the worst work experience I had ever had in my life.

The pay and benefits were great, it was my manager and one coworker that made for a horrible experience. It started off great, I did really well in my interview, and I got hired. Then it went downhill very quickly.