Latest / Don't Pack Your Bikini / Ep. 3: Job Transitions Part 1 - A Really Hard Space

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Ep. 3: Job Transitions Part 1 - A Really Hard Space · Don't Pack Your Bikini

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: You know that moment when you're about to pack your favorite bikini.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_03: But some part of you knows you're not gonna use it.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we know that feeling.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Polly.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm Jennifer.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: We started as Disney interns and found a friendship that survived hurricanes, heartbreaks, career pivots, and everything life decided to throw at us.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Don't Pack Your Bikini.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_03: Real conversations with women who have the receipts for lives that didn't go according to plan.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's messier, harder, funnier, and honestly, so much more interesting than anything you could have packed for.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: No filters and no pretending it was always graceful.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: So grab a glass of wine and your comfiest pajamas.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: Because here's what we do know.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: The bikini was never the point.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: I am joined here from all the coasts.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sitting in the Midwest.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_03: Linda's sitting in the mountain seats.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: States, seats, they're states, they're not seats.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: She's in a seat, but but her seat is in a state.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: Mountain states.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_03: And Polly's sitting in one of the original 13 colonies.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't know, Polly, if you call that East Coast or not, because you're sort of on the west coast of the 13 colonies.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: No, the middle.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but it's not a colony.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: What yeah.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, Pennsylvania.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: Philly York, Pennsylvania was the first capital of the United States.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I live 40 minutes from York.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: That's cool.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: Didn't know that.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: Fun fact with Polly.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_03: Fun fact with Polly.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: So Linda, her undergrad was in journalism, and mine was in corporate communications, which was split between the journalism school and the business school.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_03: But Polly, she's an undergrad in history.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So journalism, history, and what did you think?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: It was corporate communications, which was a split between the school of journalism and the school business.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we're all a bunch of liberal arts graduates.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: That is exactly right.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: But that's why she knows that York was the first capital.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, oh really?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: They didn't know that.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: So we have all of us sitting here have been through mid-life job transitions.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I got fired in my 20s.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: I love standing on college campuses and said, like, I've been fired.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: Y'all should get fired.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: Not for doing anything bad.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't do anything bad.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's just the realism of whether you're fired, you're downsized, you're laid off, you're outsourced, you're whatever.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: It all kind of feels the same because it's this gut punch of what am I gonna do tomorrow?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: How do I recover from this?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm just gonna let you guys tell your stories and I'm gonna start with Polly actually, because Polly has been through so many job transitions this year.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: I actually have lost count, but I feel like it's been in the last 12 months.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, two.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, two.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's your third job in a year, but two times that things have changed.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: I was laid off twice.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I had I've been in marketing for forever.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: I was a teacher first, then marketing.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the first my my first marketing job I left because my boss, that's the one I didn't send sign the NDA for, he was terrible.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: And and I can say that was at the vineyard.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: That was the restaurant and the restaurant.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Then I went to work for a manufacturing company and everyone was lovely there.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I personally like small business, working for small business, and everyone was great, but I'm not sure the business was doing terrific.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: So my position was eliminated.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the first time that I had ever been like laid off.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it was, it was crazy.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like you you spend so much time at work, and then you don't have any work to do, and it's it's a weird feeling.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: You feel kind of worthless.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: And going through the job process, you know, trying to find a job is humbling, right?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: You you are apply and you think, yes, this is the perfect job, and then you don't hear anything, and you reach out, and you know, you network and you do all these things, and and it's all I can say is it's humbling, and you have to literally have a pretty good self-esteem before just you have to have some self-worth.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I was then hired for an educate an online education company, and it was corporate, and I was like, ooh, do I want to do this?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I did it.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: I love the person that hired me.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: I loved my manager, and then this was just last fall, this was about a year ago, they made it feel not corporate.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then the CMO, who was new as well, came in and brought in a whole new leadership team.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that senior director was laid off.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: That was in January of this year.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the new person that came in, we just it was like, it was just not great.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that leadership change really it really can mess things up.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Not mess things up, but it really can change the dynamic of a team.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so I went from this corporate job that didn't feel corporate to a corporate job that felt very corporate.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I got laid off.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_03: You started that job in the fall and then laid off by winter time.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: It was spring, but I had been, I had already been applying because I knew it wasn't going well.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was either me getting laid off or me f quitting.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: And before I got laid off, I had I had I knew I was gonna get an offer.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know, but I had a good sense that I was gonna get a job offer.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it was kind of it wasn't as dramatic as the previous time.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: It was a little less painful because I knew I couldn't be in corporate again.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so anyway.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it it's it's a it's a terrible feeling because you feel kind of worthless.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and then, you know, at a certain age.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna tell you my age.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: We're all about the same age.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, at a certain age, you're like, oh my gosh, I have to start over.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Luckily, I landed, I think, in the right place.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: So happy about that.
• 6:36
  unknown: Correct.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: But how long have you how long have you been there now, where you are now?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: Three months.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: Since June.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_03: June.
• 6:44
  unknown: Yeah.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: So Linda, you want to give like the highlight reel because you've been through, since I've known you, you've been through a couple job transitions too for different reasons.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: I went through a major layoff.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: I had been at Dow for 10 plus years, and I was one of like 2400 layoffs.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like Dow, it was kind of typical in that manufacturing space that every couple years you were at least because there was always a restructure, uh, restructuring, right?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went through that, but I'd been there for a long time.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a very generous severance package.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was still heartbreaking because it's for me, because it's the place I grew up as my first real, you know, I felt like my first real job.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: I earned both of my degrees while I was there, had started on a help desk and moved into leadership my last 10 years there.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was heartbreaking.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I mourned a lot, but ended up doing some pro bono work as a lawyer.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And because my husband said, How about that law degree you got?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I hooked up with a friend of mine I went to law school with.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: She hired me pro bono and then hired me full-time, and I did that for a while, and so it really helped.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: I still harbored a lot of resentment, I think, because I had spent so long at Dow and I loved it.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: I loved being there.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I I I did harbor resentment about losing the place that I love where I grew up, but it was a it was a better landing for me because I could go, I went right into pro bono legal work and started learning and then got hired.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Then I went through it again.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: So this is I'll have three of these.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: I went through it again with it was a company at the time called Teradata Marketing Applications.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was a primo, became owned by Teradata Marketing Applications.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I started there after I left the city of Indianapolis as an attorney.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I really liked it too, and had a really posh corner office.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was awesome.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And but it wasn't performing well.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the next thing you know, I'm leading a project and I get a message uh from my from my leader who said, Hey, I need you to start the process to cancel the contract we just signed with this company and get the money back.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Okay.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, We'll talk later.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: But she said, I need you to start that process right away.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're not going to move forward with that or the other project.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I called my husband, I said, I am going to be laid off today.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he was like, You're overreacting.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what it means.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I have a portfolio of projects, and these two are my biggest.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: And sure enough, that's exactly what happened.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the next month, that happened in early May, and the next month I had a job.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a very soft landing, you know.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have to sweat it very much.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Most recently, though, I accepted a role.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: And last September, brand new, really excited about it.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: But the mandate was you have to relocate to Utah.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so my husband and I had done the research before I even applied for the job to say, hey, is this a it was never a destination?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And no tea, no shade to Utah.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: It just wasn't.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so I said, you know what?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's closer to Phoenix.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so we started doing the research where we have family, and it was like, let's go on an adventure.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, my my mother-in-law had passed away, so it was really kind of our we love our friends and family, but the moms are always the anchor.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're both moms, then you know that moms are the anchor, you don't leave mom.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so my mom had passed away, his mom just passed away, and we were like, okay, let's do this.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I accepted the role.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was really excited, but the mandate was we had to relocate.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we relocated here in November of 2025, bought our house in December of 2025, a month later.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: On April 20th, I was told my job was eliminated.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, it hit hard.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: It always hits incredibly hard.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: But now I'm in a place where I had just started forging a really small network.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I did meet some really amazing.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: I have met some really amazing women out here who thankfully at that time, I had literally just met them, like two weeks before I got this news.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: But they leaned in, they were like, How can we help?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: They were just uh phenomenal and awesome, but still not the same as when you have your network of where you lived all of your life, your friends, your family, the safety of knowing everywhere you go down the street, your neighbors, that at any time somebody can drop in and say hello to you, or at any time you could go down the street.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: All of that's gone.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just us here in Utah.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so it and I still feel it, it still hurts.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's an it's an incredibly jarring experience.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think for me, what I find, you know, and I just wrote an article, uh, it's called Jargon Monoxide, and it'll get published soon.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I think the hardest part about all of this is there are some people who say things and it's like, why would you even say that?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: There are others that mean well, but it doesn't land right.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of time you hear the common things.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Number one is, you know, this is happening to a lot of people.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care about a lot of people.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care about that.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that it has, I know that it will continue to, but at that moment, I don't care what's happening to a lot of people.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: I care what's happening about to me and to my family.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then I have to, we have to think about the mortgage payment.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: How much is Cobra gonna cost?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what about this trip?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: What do I tell my friends?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: What does this mean for me?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: This must mean that I suck.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing that I forgot about in all my divinous as I'm moving through this process, you know, that I also have a husband who left his friends, right?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to get caught up in the impact to me, but then I felt double the guilt because he gave up his friendships as well to move out here and not give them up like he doesn't have them, but not see them, you know, and so the other thing that I heard was don't take it personally.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I know, and I know what for the most part, I know what you mean by that.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: It means don't internalize this to mean that you suck, that you are valuable, that you are extraordinary, that you are good.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: I know that's what it means, but how it hits is don't take it personally.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like a riff is personal because you're worried about your mortgage, your health insurance, what you're gonna do next, what job are you going to be able to get in, especially in an incredibly tough economy?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: What things do you have to give up?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, all of that is deeply personal.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And for someone to say, don't take it personal, and maybe what you mean is don't let it define your worth, or maybe what you mean is this was just a numbers decision, not it's not about you personally.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care about that.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: I care about the fact that now I have to sweat and I have to be thankful, and I will say this.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: I am in all of this, I'm thankful that I have someone else with me on this journey to help me.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I have two dogs.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've spoken with a lot of people over the last few months, and and a lot of women who are raising kids, who women who are single.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: I got laid off as a single mom.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: That I am very fortunate that that's not my journey.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's still someone with me.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: I can't imagine if you were raising two kids on your own, you're really worried about it.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I know someone else who's been, you know, has a kid, and there are no parents, there are no, there's no framework, there's no fallback.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's me and my kids.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I consider myself thankful for that, as weird as that sounds, because you'd have to try to reframe um the negative, right?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And and I just want to share a statistic.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know in July of this year, women bore a hundred percent of the layoffs in July?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: 32,000 women bore a hundred percent.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_03: That's interesting.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'd like to dig into the why behind that here in a bit, but which we can only make some expensive.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_03: Probably know the why, but yeah.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: But we may not want to say it.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I appreciate that because I feel the same way when I got laid off both times.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm married, my husband has a job, like I have health insurance through him.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, even though I was laid off and it was terrible and gut punch and all that kind of thing, I didn't really have to worry about our mortgage payment or you know, taking the kids to the doctor.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: That part was, I didn't have to worry about that, which was nice, I guess.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: It was a relief.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: It was I can tell you that one less thing to worry about.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: One less thing.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're still worried.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, because this whole process is, you know, the first couple of times it happened to me, I had a softer landing.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when I lost the job at Dow, when my job was eliminated at Dow, I mean, I had two weeks for every year severance I was there, plus they carried my insurance for a year and a half.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the way that they had it, I had two months, uh, had a couple months lead time.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had phenomenal benefits.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I could have just lived off my benefits for as long as I needed to.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, for well, not for as long as I needed to, but for a while.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, that was different than this time.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: This time is different, and you know, there's there's I think it the one statistic is that 60 60 something percent of women, it is I have it right here.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: A Glassdoor poll found that 63% of women felt pressure to accept lower salaries following a layoff compared to 52% of men.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a layoff is a layoff, and I'm not trying to throw any shade at men here, but women are feeling that pressure now.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Not only, you know, did we lose the majority of the jobs in July.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when we do find another job, we're feeling the pressure to say, okay, you know what, maybe I just need to take this job.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: No, Linda, maybe you should just take the job, even though it's not paying what you want, because then you can just kind of relax, you know, and just coast out.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, just and I was like, well, no, I don't want to do that.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't want to just do that because to me it's more than a job, it's a calling, it's tied up in work is tied up in my North Star.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it it all depends on where you're at in your journey in your life, right?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, idea.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, hey, you know, it may be that I'm doing bake sales, car washes, and uh will speak for mortgage fees, you know.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, who knows what's gonna happen in the future, but I think that, you know, that settling part is the hard, right?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it's for everyone, men and women, and and every and every person in between there.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: But we're in a really hard space right now.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_03: We've shared our stories, but we've barely scratched the surface.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_03: In part two, we're getting real about what job loss actually costs.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_03: And we're not talking about the money.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_03: Plus, we'll unpack the latest interview trains that have nothing to do with your qualifications.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: Ever heard of the coffee cup test?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_03: The earport test?
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: You're gonna want to hear this.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_03: Join us next time for part two of job transitions the real cost.