***
I couldn’t even bring myself to crawl into the confining space of my car. The car that had been bought and paid for by my endless hours spent at this company. The luxurious car that I’d saved and drooled over like a teenage boy seeing a Porsche for the first time. It had meant so much to me at the time, a symbol that I was finally moving up in the world.
Now? I couldn’t give a damn about the stupid thing, couldn’t get away from it fast enough. I relied on my own two feet to carry me as far from that building and that lifestyle as they possibly could. The world that I had so longed to belong to, and for so long been a part of, suddenly seemed full of treacherous uncertainties.
How many other times had they done something like this without telling me? Suddenly, I was reliving everyone that had been let go in my time there, analyzing every little moment that seemed suspicious to my sleep deprived, and strung out on worry, mind.
Stop doing this to yourself! The command was coming from whatever sense of self-preservation that I had left. I was going to drive myself crazy trying to discover some meaning behind it all. They were doing something corrupt, plain and simple. It didn’t mean that there was some great, big conspiracy theory behind it, did it?
No. But it means that you don’t want to be a part of it.
I struggled with the realization, but it had taken root, and refused to be pulled up and cast out. The truth was, I was more than just a little uncomfortable with what they were asking me to do.
So the question became, not if, but when. I only had a few hours to call them and tell them what I was thinking, or they would let me go anyway. At least this way, I could do it on my own terms. It may not mean much to some people, but that was the difference between being dragged to your own death, or walking into it with your head held high. In the end, I would still be terminated, my work life there cut short, but it would be of my own doing.
Because I would not be a part of ruining a man’s life, legal or not. It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair.