COVID-19 hit The University of Akron’s enrollment hard and the administration decided that cuts to staffing were necessary.
It was deep and brutal and ugly. And while it was not my decision, I had to be the one to fire one of my colleagues. He took it better than anyone could have expected, but it was a rough day for everyone.
And right at the end of the day, another of my colleagues from another department called me in a panic from the parking lot of his building.
He had been fired. And he found out when they came into his office to force him to log off his computer. He was freaking out and no one had talked to him yet or given him any information. He was done and as far as he knew, that was it.
The nature of our jobs sometimes put us at odds over the years, but we both saw the bigger picture and while “friends” might have been pushing it at times, we were respected colleagues.
As soon as he could get out what was happening, I asked for his non-UA email address. And when he gave it to me, I emailed him right away so that he would have mine. A connection, in case the rest got lost.
We talked for a few minutes and I tried to help him process what had happened. He ended the call abruptly and I was left with an empty line.
I considered for a few minutes on what to do, the tracked down another colleague in the same building and told him what was going on – and asked that they check on him in the parking lot.
Later on I found out that the abrupt temination of the call was prompted by his supervisor looking for him to have the meeting – the one that should have taken place before his access was dropped.
I sent him an email a few days later to check on him. And I was humbled that of all the people that he worked with on campus, I was the one he reached out to when everything fell apart. It had been really important to him that he let me know how much he appreciated working with me. I wished him the best and told him to keep in touch.
And last week – months after everything happened – I emailed him again to see how he was doing.
He called me within a few minutes, grateful that I had reached out. We talked for a while about his job prospects and he told me that no one else – not anyone in his department that he had worked with for decades – had checked on him.
I was glad that I had done so – and deeply sad and disappointed that I was the only one that had.
I don’t get it. I just simply don’t understand what had happened or why it happened or how someone could just be tossed aside.
But none of that mattered. What mattered was that someone tried to connect, tried to share a little hope.
I wish him and all the rest of my colleagues well. These are strange and difficult times and all we have are each other. And maybe that will be enough.