On a warm, dazzling day in the nation’s capital in mid-May 2023, I fastened a flower crown to my head, poured myself a Pink Slip — a homemade mezcal-laden cocktail — and snapped a selfie of me holding said cocktail in a cup labeled “Human Resources.” In our backyard, my roommate and I gathered a small but lively group of our friends and coworkers, who chatted, ate pizza and constructed “vision boards” out of old National Geographic and Women’s Health magazines. Towards the end of the gathering, we strung up the vibrant “Severance Piñata,” which we ended up filling with regular ol’ Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups because actual cash was going to be kind of a hassle, and the laid-off workers took turns beating it up.
This party was my “layoff shower,” an idea that my roommate and I came up with after I received word just a few weeks prior that my position and team at National Geographic was going to be eliminated.
So to understand why I threw a shower, let’s revisit that day: April 24, 2023. That morning, I was walking my usual commute to National Geographic headquarters. Things had gotten increasingly tense at the office, as we knew that Disney — which owns National Geographic Partners — was planning to cut 7,000 jobs this year. Like many of my coworkers, I didn’t know how much it was going to hit us. I had also received texts from other friends, especially in radio and podcasting, who had gotten laid off in recent weeks from NPR, SiriusXM and Gimlet/Spotify. And I wondered if I’d be next.
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As I walked, I pulled out my phone to check my emails and sure enough, I saw an email from our general manager with a calendar invitation to meet with him individually, labeled “Touchbase.”
An hour and a half later, I was staring at our general manager as he told me that my position was being eliminated, that this decision to let me go was not reflective of my performance — Nat Geo was planning to go in a “different direction” for its audio content.
I felt a pressure mount deep inside my head, thinking about how I had only moved to D.C. six months earlier to keep my job, the job that was helping me pay mine and my partner’s bills in two cities (D.C. and Durham, N.C. where my partner attends graduate school) and furthermore, the job I thought I had wanted since I was a teenager with dreams of becoming a traveling environmental journalist. I took a breath and said that I was grateful for my time at National Geographic, then got up from my chair, holding my severance letter.
What I felt leaving that room was like those action movies where explosives go off and fire and smoke just whoosh out of the building. I am the building in this analogy. And I am also the person trying to escape and watching the building collapse, too, because I am dissociating.
Later, I talked with my roommate, a video producer who also works at Nat Geo but was not laid off, and unpacked what had happened with my team. Over the last several months, the two of us had become almost like sisters, often watching hours of reality TV together after work and commiserating over having long-distance relationships with our respective partners, since working for a Disney-owned company meant that we were required to come in person to the office four days a week. And as we continued to talk for days about my next steps, an idea surfaced: What if we threw a layoff shower?
It was a silly hypothetical at first. If people held showers for the important events in their lives, why not throw one for getting laid off? We could make vision boards, so that my future isn’t a void, I said. We could make pink cocktails that we’d call Pink Slips. I searched on Amazon for flower crowns women wear at their bridal and baby showers, and eventually the piñatas. It moved very quickly from being a joke to something we wanted to plan.
Two days later, I woke up to find a few middle-of-the-night texts from my roommate, which contained a painfully adorable layoff shower invitation she designed. It included a graphic of a sad woman (me) holding a box that contained a microphone, with text that read, “Please join us for a layoff shower honoring Eli Chen.” And as a reference to my soon-to-be former employer, it was all encased in a yellow border.
Journalist Eli Chen drinks a ‘Pink Slip’ cocktail at the layoff shower she threw after learning that she and her team were being laid off from National Geographic.
Planning this party with Rebekah, clearly the Roommate of the Year, was the wonderful, healthy distraction I needed. I was having trouble regulating my anger over the situation. I’d grown up in an immigrant household where my parents constantly stressed the value of hard work and expectations of building a linearly successful career. But I wasn’t prepared for the moment when the reality of the industry and the economy would change my prospects and make me feel like all the work that I and my team had done was for nothing. This was on the best team I’d ever worked with — leading an audio team with two women of color who served as amazing role models, and working with creative, talented producers who have a genuine interest in high-quality narrative storytelling. And I felt sad about losing that.
But I also needed to be reminded that the work I did wasn’t for nothing, that the work my team produced actually mattered and still matters to people. At the party, a photo editor told me that stories she heard through the Overheard podcast were in large part why she came to National Geographic. There was a lot to celebrate about the work over the last two and a half years, and, despite losing my job, I felt grateful to have friends and colleagues who were willing to be a part of this weird concept of a party.
If you are a journalist (or doesn’t matter what occupation!) who’s been laid off this year and you want to throw a layoff shower, I’ll just say that there are no rules, other than to have fun and make it your own. We didn’t do this at my party, but a lot of people asked if I had a registry. I didn’t because I hate asking things from people, but it might be a good idea especially if you are financially struggling, and unfortunately some recently laid off journalists have yet to receive severance.
You can also take ideas from another party I saw on social media that involved Yowei Shaw, co-host of NPR’s Invisibilia. She didn’t have a layoff shower per se, but more like a coven-esque farewell party to the show, which involved chanting, lighting production schedules on fire, spitting on an Invisibilia raft made of sticks that Yowei’s husband built and releasing it down a river.
In whatever manner you want to mark this transition, I hope you approach it with love and joy for yourself. Getting laid off made me feel like one of many cogs getting deleted inside a giant corporate machine, but being able to gather and laugh with my chosen family and friends did help me feel like a person again. It helped me feel really grateful for what I have, which is a community that will be there for me, especially in these uncertain times.
If you’ve been laid off, I hope that you have that, too.
By Rodell Tolliver
2 oz mezcal
.5 oz Cointreau
.5 oz lime juice
1 oz strawberry lemonade (substitute pink grapefruit juice for less sweetness)
Sparkling water to fill
Serve over ice and garnish with lime wheel.