Last Man Standing

I was at the local grocery store when I ran into an old colleague who lived in town. We exchanged pleasantries and chit-chatted about my new position teaching for the last year. I told him how much I enjoyed the job and how it was challenging in a good way. It was a great new mountain for me to climb from a career perspective. Then they asked me “Did you hear about (your old boss)?” They then proceeded to tell me that my former supervisor, after many years, had abruptly left the position they were in. This was a huge shock, as my former supervisor was a rock of stability. They were never the type of person who would leave a position abruptly so this type of action was completely out of character. In truth I didn’t believe it at first. I naturally made some calls over the next few days to confirm the news and figure out what was going on. As I started to pay more attention to the situation I came to the conclusion that why they left wasn’t nearly as interesting as what happened over the following few weeks.

An important point about my former job, at least important for this narrative, was that we were a very stable and close-knit team. We had our ups and downs, but for the most part the majority of the team was rock solid and most of the members were long-serving. Within weeks after the departure of our boss, other very long tenured former colleagues left the organization. In effect the team completely…