First day as an ex-employee

Yesterday was my last day at Noble, so for at least the time being I’m no longer a corporate stooge of Big Oil. As last days went, it was pretty tame; I finished cleaning my personal belongings out of my office, I turned in my badge, I shook hands with a lot of people. What struck me is how unaffected I was by all of it.

Admittedly, I haven’t had that much experience when it comes to leaving jobs. When I got laid off from AT&T, I ended up crying on my last day. I think that was partially because it was the only real job I’d ever had, and I was scared as all hell. When I got fired from NBM, there was more crying, but those were the sort of frustrated tears you tend to have when you’ve been screwed over by your boss completely out of the blue.

So I guess with those as my only experiences, I expected at least to get sniffly on my last day at Noble. And… nothing. It really just felt like any other day. Who knows, maybe in a week when it all hits home I’ll have a nice little cry because I miss my coworkers and my job.

But I kind of doubt it. I think, fair or not, I really said my goodbyes to the job back in February when I got accepted in to grad school. And even before that, I was slowly drifting away. There hasn’t been a whole lot of work for me to do since the economy took a dump, really. Budgets are tight, exploration is limited, and I think a lot of us were scrabbling for things that would just make us look busy. But that feeling of not being needed really hit home in January, when I had the opportunity to start working full time again and discovered that I just didn’t have enough work to justify charging forty hours on the clock.

So rather than that sharp, abrupt severance that I had with my former jobs, this feels like I’ve simply come unmoored and drifted slowly away. There are worse ways to part from a job, I think. I’ll miss my coworkers, but I certainly don’t miss crying over it.

And it also helps, I think, that I’ve got a three year adventure to look forward to.