Being made redundant is the weirdest thing when the company isn’t around anymore. There’s no one to be mad at other than myself for not realising that this would be the inevitable end. I really should have pulled my socks up sooner and come up with some sort of idea that would keep me going for the long term. I just needed to brave it and go do some interviews. I was clearly capable of ‘something’ but I didn’t realise how much I knew until I was forced to find a new job.

When I told my girlfriend that I was being made redundant, it was literally the worst timing ever. It was a Friday and we were going to drive back north to my mum’s house for the weekend. My girlfriend had flu and had just finished work for the day herself. When I got to her, she was actually asleep in the car because she couldn’t take the illness anymore.

I stepped in the car. Braced myself. Told her that everything will be OK. And then just let it out: “[AGENCY] is over. Liquidated. Done. Gone. Today.” We’ll deal with this when we get home.

We continued in the way that we usually do – we would drive as far as we could manage, stop for some KFC somewhere on the M1 – and then arrive up there by about 10pm.

Usually we would be having all kinds of fun on the way up like singing along to the CDs LOUD, asking each other crazy questions and planning what we would do with a lottery win, but there was none of that. My girlfriend was way too ill and we had bigger things to worry about.

For some reason I really felt quite happy that I was free from the agency, but I was obviously putting on a brave face, because I was going to have to try to figure out how to get a new job FAST!

Our weekend was completely uneventful. Nothing happened and I definitely didn’t tell my mum or any of my family what had just happened. I just had to keep it moving. The only thing we did decide was that my wife was going to take Monday off as sick so we could come up with the plan for the immediate future.

  • Claim redundancy pay
  • Get a loan
  • Buy work equipment
  • Make a CV
  • Buy a suit
  • Find a job

It’s go time.

So I did everything in that exact order.