Not as ready as I thought

I went to a Goodbye Happy Hour for a friend/former co-worker last night. It was populated with people who work for my old company (not the internet one, the dumbass device one). I ended up sitting next to the HR girl who participated in my firing. I know I was rude to her but somehow I can't make myself give a shit. I thought I could hang out with these people with no issues, but apparently not yet.

How bad has the company gotten? My friend quit without having another job to go to, not the usual pattern in job searching. He just couldn't take the crap anymore. I'm lucky I'm not there anymore.

Besides Josh (my quitting friend) there was only one other person I felt like talking to but she had to leave early. Due to the beer timing and Josh's arrival time, I was stuck there for longer than I wanted to be. And I ended up hardly getting a chance to talk to Josh at all.

How bad was it? I started crocheting at the table so I could focus on something other than the people around me. It made a nice little "I'm here and I'm listening but I can't talk cause I'm counting" barrier. Or it made me look like a freak. But it kept me there long enough to celebrate with Josh and that was the point.

Josh was my last big connection with the company. It's going to be odd to not have that in common and I wonder what it's going to do to our friendship. I think it will survive, but we'll need to find another topic to take up 50% of the conversation.

There's another Goodbye HH for Josh on Monday (yes, any excuse to drink and kill off the work crap brain cells for these guys). I've been invited but there's no way I'm going. I've felt bad enough for one week.

And please remind me not to drink beer, it just makes me depressed.

This was really hard to write. There's still a lot of hatred bubbling under my surface about that place and how they treated me. I was drowning at that company and instead of giving me a helping hand, they handed me a load of rocks to hold. And when I sank, they just rowed off and left me there. I gave them years of hard work and massive flexibility (three departments and four positions in five years, all their decisions) and all they gave me back was "We've decide to terminate your position." It's hard to forgive that.