What I’ve Learned About Job Hunting Over 50

Relationships are everything

Patrick Metzger
Crow’s Feet
Published in
6 min readMay 18, 2023

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“How long do you have to work here to get your own monitor?” Image by fizkes on Shutterstock.com

A couple of months back, I lost my job. Well, it’s not really lost; I know where it is, I just don’t have it anymore.

It came as no surprise. Three-quarters of the people on my team, including my boss, had been let go several months earlier and business hadn’t improved any since then.

The morning of my own forced departure began with a Slack message from a colleague beginning with “Oh no!”, which for you writers out there is a terrific way to grab the interest of your audience.

“I’ve got an unscheduled call with David (the COO) this morning. It just says “Touch base.”

If you’ve worked in the corporate world, you know that senior people don’t hold spontaneous meetings to hand out employee-of-the-month plaques.

I checked my calendar. “I’ve got one too. It was set up by HR.” Cue ominous music.

Long before nine o’clock, a flurry of Slack messages had circulated among the team as we determined who was staying and who was getting the boot, because of course, that’s what was happening.

My call was uneventful. A suitably remorseful David read the scripted statement required by Legal, and I…

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Patrick Metzger
Crow’s Feet

Dilettante, smartass, apocalypticist. ***See “Lists” for stories by genre.***