About a month or so after I started working at my current job, someone arrived at the office to meet with one of my other coworkers. While he waited in the lobby, he noticed my name plate (yeah, now I have an official name plate and some business cards, I’m official).

Visitor: “I used to work with a guy with that last name years ago!”

My name isn’t exactly common, so I asked him what business he was in. He told me he was involved with transportation and logistics. Hmm…

The guy elaborated a bit and said, “I think his name was Thomas W.”

“Yeah, that was my dad.”

“Oh wow, small world! What’s he doing now?”

It was an innocent question. He didn’t know that my dad had died in 2000. My dark humor and seemingly infinite storage of “Seinfeld” quotes almost kicked in and my inner George Costanza could’ve said, “yada”… But I went with the truth.

Since working at this new place, I have been encountering some of those “small world” moments and a lot of feelings like I belong there. I’ve never felt so in sync with a job.

Oh, and before I got my current job, I interviewed at the place my dad used to work. That is a story for another blog.

I can’t remember when we started hearing word about the fate of the post-secondary college I used to work for, but we weren’t getting word directly from HQ. Now at first, I didn’t look up the news because that’s when I panic. Instead, someone in another department would see the news online and then come up to me to talk about it so we’d both panic.

Still though, I admit I would go home and put my head in the sand by watching the shows I was addicted to like “The Vampire Diaries” and “The Originals”. They were a nice escape.

Then the news started to get to me, along with the office’s atmosphere. The amount of mail was dwindling, our cleaning company seemed to be giving up and my coworkers were losing their spirit.

So….I updated my resume and wrote some cover letters and started to apply for jobs. I went on one interview, and even though it went well, the pay wasn’t the best, the office smelled funky and quite frankly I wasn’t ready to jump ship.

During one weekend, I watched the movie “The Poseiden Adventure”, and by the end of that movie there was only a small group of survivors. The theme song was “The Morning After” and my dark sense of humor kicked in. I compared the situation at work to the movie. Our school; nationwide, seemed to be turning upside down after being hit by a tidal wave.

In the end, we really were a small group. On the last day that wasn’t officially the last day, it was the Friday before Labor Day weekend. They had also conveniently told us we were given an extra day off. We waited for some kind of confirmation about…anything, so we were all huddled around the switchboard as the director of our school told us what she knew, and even that wasn’t quite solidified. One coworker said, “So do you think we should gather up all of our sh** before we leave tonight?” That was definite.

We all walked out of the building in a stupor, not knowing quite what to do. It was bizarre, and I don’t normally use that word.

Well, that was the last time we were a school. On Tuesday, September 6th, 2016, ITT Technical Institute was no longer a school. Diplomas for the September graduating class were mailed out, there wasn’t any graduation ceremony, etc. It was incredibly depressing.

I was only out of a job for three weeks until I was hired by the company I work for now. That was also rattling to me; just the whole experience, and even when I was hired, it didn’t register with me or I would’ve been in better spirits.

Anyway, so that’s my first actual update. Yay!

Is anyone still here? I felt compelled to post something new since….what…2013, I think? I’m too lazy to look back right now.

Not sure where to start, but thought I’d chime in briefly. I hope and pray that you’re all doing well and not turning into zombies yet!