Laid Off.

A little over a week ago, we got some pretty crazy news and it's changed a lot of our upcoming plans. It's been stressful but we are taking it as best as we can. When God closes a door he opens a window.

It's no secret that T-Mobile, USA has been on a journey to being acquired by AT&T, but a month or so ago, the deal fell through when the Department of Justice and the FCC had some concerns over the merge. AT&T decided to drop the deal for now, but it was everyone's intention to continue with the deal the following year. T-Mobile, in return, got 4 billion bucks from AT&T and spectrum, so all was looking good. We all knew that there would be some big changes happening soon, but none of us knew it would be this soon.

On Thursday, March 22nd, I went to work as usual. The day was normal and super slow so we expected that they would send us home. However, we were told no one was going home early and we didn't know why, other than our President was in the building in a meeting. He lives across the country, so this is not a common occurance.

At 1pm, 30 minutes before we were supposed to go home, an announcement was made to the entire building, to gather our things, shut down our computers and meet on the other side of the building. We didn't know what was happening, but the mood was weird.

We met in a common area together, about 200 of us, as the President of our division stepped up on a chair and said, "I just want to read this verbatim, so there is no confusion." And he proceeded to read a statement that Duetche Telecom had written earlier that day.

The next 30 seconds were a blur, but we found out that exactly 90 days later, on June 22nd, T-Mobile would be closing 7 of our 27 centers nation wide...including ours.

In that moment Nathan and I both lost our jobs, along with 3300 other employees across the nation. The announcement was timed so that everyone who was effected by this was recieving the announcement at the same time.

I called Nathan in hysterics, because I had shortly afterward realized that we would both be out of work 5 days before our little girl is due to be born. What about money? What about MEDICAL insurance?

This is a scary time for us, but again we are taking it as best as we can. Nathan wanted a new job anyway, and I wasn't planning on returning to work after the baby was born, but that was under the assumption that Nate was still employed...

Anyway, things happen for a reason. We will get through this! We do qualify for unemployement and we each get about 4 months of severance pay, so we will make it through!