I was hired as a corporate lawyer by Monsanto Company and over time became a company man supporting Monsanto. I felt this was my dream job, the culmination of all my education and hard work. If the job required long hours and working on weekends or holidays, I did it without reservation. It was 1973 during an era when workers could reasonably expect to remain employed by the same company for the bulk of their career. The unwritten understanding was not to seek another job. Then in the 1980s and 1990’s many U.S. corporations downsized, even when business was good in no small part because the corporations’ stock often rose on news of layoffs, which investors perceived as evidence that management was serious about keeping costs down and profit margins high. Stock prices rose and top executive stock options paid off big time.
Monsanto Company announced in the summer of 1995 that it had hired Boston Consulting Group to help re-engineer its staff functions- a code word for downsizing. Then in September, the company announced that there would be a reduction in force in the law department.
I developed a strategy to try to save my job by seeking allies supporting me outside the law department. My most influential internal Monsanto clients were the production plant managers at the biggest plants in Louisiana, North Carolina, and Illinois. I was hesitant to ask for help as I was an introvert, and not good at promoting myself but concluded it was my only chance and that I wanted to keep my job. As a result, I moved way out of my comfort zone. I emailed and talked at length with the plant representatives at these plants about my job concerns and outlined the compliance and liability cost savings, as well as profit, increases my work had generated for the plants. I asked for support. Each plant manager agreed to contact their corporate manufacturing directors and ask the directors to lobby for my job retention with the law department downsizing decision makers. The plant managers began sending me copies of valentines- memos to their bosses and my bosses stating my legal value added for significant business results and the need to retain me.
All went according to plan until I was called into my boss’s office on the announcement day in November 1995 and told that my job had been eliminated. The job loss shook me to the core- a major life event. But somehow I was still in pro-active mode and immediately contacted the plant managers and manufacturing directors who all expressed shock and immediately made a final pitch to their vice presidents of manufacturing. A day went by and I got a call from the company’s top manufacturing director saying he had fought for me but was told the decision was from the top. It had nothing to do with my performance. The memory of the people in Monsanto that had supported and fought to keep me is a good one. Many called me, wrote me personal notes and more often stopped by my office in the days following the announcement day to express regret and disappointment in my layoff.
I was 50 years old and had worked for only one company for almost 25 years since law school. I had invested my time, energy, and emotions in my job and based a lot of my identity and self-worth on it. To have it disappear for reasons beyond my control triggered deep feelings of failure and a blow to my self-esteem.
There were also ricochet effects. My son was a sophomore at New York University at the time and I remember meeting him at the St. Louis airport on his way home for Thanksgiving. I put on a brave face and told him I would find another job and not worry about school costs. We didn’t talk much over Thanksgiving but when he returned to NYU he finished the semester, withdrew, and entered a local college in the spring. While I told him I could afford the NYU cost, he was firm and determined to save me money by living at home while going to college. I really appreciated his action but his dream of studying at NYU had burst and I will always live with a regret that he never finished his degree.
What I learned about the job loss was to face the hard truth consciously, embrace the disappointment, and wrap my arms around it- then it was a liberating experience. Life is not fair but what mattered is how I responded. I learned specifically never to fall in love with a job or a company again.
I jumped into the job search with determination. Mentally, I developed an attitude of never letting myself get too high or low based on a job contact and not limiting myself geographically. I also adopted an attitude that I would always look for my next job. By the end of the 6 month outplacement time, I had two law firm offers and one corporate in-house offer equal to or above my Monsanto salary.
In April 1996 I accepted a position as Vice President- Legal for Heritage Environmental nServices, Inc, an environmental recycling and disposal company in Indianapolis, on the first day after my Monsanto employment ended. It was a family-owned business and unknown to me was losing money. About a year and a half after I started there the President called me into his office and told me of the company’s troubled financial condition and that he was terminating three vice presidents, including me. He gave me a one-month notice. Since Monsanto had given me no going away party, I organized my own going away party at the company headquarters and invited the president who attended but was puzzled and surprised about the celebration. I never told him I held my own going away party.
Finding a new job was no longer an emotional experience and through networking, I soon got a job as a Georgia Pacific Company corporate environmental counsel in their law department in Atlanta where I retired in 2003.
What I do know is that the pain and suffering I experienced and felt with my job losses made me stronger and wiser. It allowed me to grow, learn and change. My job uncertainty experience allowed me to not get emotionally attached to a job or a company, to process the hard truth that nothing lasts forever, and to vigorously embrace this reality as a central focus of my life.
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