July 11th and the All-Star Game

This morning when I got in the car and started listening to my favorite sports talk radio station, The Ticket, I heard them talking about The All-Star Game. This instantly took me back to a day I will never forget and that was July 11, 1995. I then looked at my watch and noticed that today was July 11th and I thought, "uh, how things have changed in 11 years."

The morning of July 11th started off to be a beautiful day but was forecasted to be hot, approaching 100. But, I didn't care because I had tickets to the All-Star Game that was being played in the new Ballpark at Arlington. I was only going to work a half day at my job as a credit analyst for Pitney Bowes Credit Corporation and then we were going to head out to the ballpark and enjoy the pre-game and eventually the game. This was possibly a once in a lifetime opportunity and I didn't know if I would ever get to go to another All-Star Game so I was excited.

But, first I had to go to work and first on the agenda was an all office "breakfast meeting" where some honcho from headquarters was going to talk to us about the future direction of the company. What I didn't know at the time was that future didn't include me.

As I was going into this big theater style meeting room they had a table with bagels, orange juice, donuts, etc. and as I was loading my plate I heard one of my co-workers say "at least they are feeding us our last meal." Unusual comment I thought.

What I didn't know was that all of the department managers had met at a hotel the night before and then were suppose to meet with their staffs prior to the meeting to give everyone a heads up but mine was still stuck in traffic. So, I walked in, chose my seat and some guy walked up to the center of the stage and said "so I guess you all know why you are here?" Everyone in my department slowly raised our hands and said we didn't and that is when he hit us "Oh, we are closing the office in September."

It initially didn't dawn on me that this meant I was losing my job (that I had for 5 months) but I quickly realized it. All of the excitement of the All-Star game went out of me. I then went back to my desk to call my wife and tell her I was losing my job and that we might not be able to buy the new house we had just started building. I then got to meet with an HR person to talk about that I could possibly relocate to Chicago for a lower paying job or they would provide me career search assistance. We were having a good time then.

I then went to the All-Star game and watched the National League beat the American League 3 to 2 and the All-Star game would always be burned into my memory as the day I lost my job.