I am redundant

I was retrenched on Monday.

Isn’t that the pits?

That will teach me to blog about contentment.

My ex-employer wants to hire someone slightly cheaper than me who only works four days a week and also sells advertising. It’s all about “revenue generation”. There is some fancy new title for the role that I can’t remember and I’ve been invited to apply for it.

I said no thank you. I am not their unicorn.

It’s a pity, as I loved writing for the Drinks Trade website and it was going really well. Forgive me while I spruik myself for a moment …

Last week I create a slide for a presentation to the Board that was headlined “Drinks Trade celebrates record breaking results’

It noted:

• Drinks Trade website attracted a record 43,000 users in the week
  June 19-26.
• From May 15-Sept 2 the website attracted 227,000 users, up 108% on the previous period.
• Drinks Trade weekly newsletter 20/8/2020 – “Liquor retailers tarnished by misleading new poll” – attracted a record click-through rate of 50%. Click-through is the main marker of audience engagement.

But success didn’t save me. And now I’m a older woman looking for work.

I got an extra week’s severance pay due to my age. It felt a bit like when I got a bowel cancer test kit in the mail for my 50th birthday.

I’d been in my latest job since 2016 – I was hired a few weeks after being retrenched from News Limited. It was a wonderful change for me – my new boss was incredibly supportive and appreciative of my work. I felt so valued, which has been a fairly rare thing in my later career. She retired a few years ago and I’ve missed her positive energy and kindness very much.

To be honest, it’s been time for me to move on for a while. I hung in there because I loved writing booze news. I’d built up so many contacts and had so much knowledge about the drinks industry. And our numbers were so good that we were breathing down the neck of our rival publication for the very first time.

Ah well, being retrenched has just given me the push I needed to try something new.

Let me know if you hear about any jobs that might suit my skills.

I didn’t blog yesterday because I spent Monday night drinking waaaaaaaay too much prosecco in my sister’s spa. I really regretted the second bottle of bubbles – and I think there may have been a mezcal shot – when I woke up face down on my bed, fully dressed with both my shoes and the lights on at 3.30am.

I couldn’t get back to sleep because my head hurt and was swirling with indignation about my retrenchment.

So I was pretty wrecked yesterday, but managed to squeeze in a fortuitously pre-arranged happy hour/$3 taco night at a yummy place called SoCal with my friend Sue. Much chitter chattering was done in groovy surrounds. We will definitely return – great venue.

I managed to sleep until 4.30am this morning, which was progress.

Onwards and upwards!

I’m focusing on the fortune cookie message I got on Sunday.

I hope the world is ready for my awesomeness very soon, I have renovation bills to pay!