And Now For The Rest of The Story

As you might know I recently did something rather earth shaking and profound.

I sent my letter to HR. You will also know that I got an email in response to my letter informing of an upcoming meeting to meet my HR rep face to face.

I could hardly wait. /sarcasm

This was to happen last Thursday.

So shortly after lunch I grabbed my notebook and began my trek over to the other building. (I have mentioned in the past that I work in a much smaller secondary building from the rest of the company.)

I can tell you this. My stomach was turning over like crazy. I had no idea what was coming. I had every reason to be hopeful with the email response I got from my rep didn't seem to indicate anything to really worry about.

That doesn't mean I didn't worry. If there is one thing I have learned in all of this is that one can never tell what someones reaction will be. In this case there was a tremendous amount on the line.

Without my job I would be unable to complete my transition. Though there is a chance that I would find work elsewhere you have to consider the current economy would not exactly be in my favor.

Having walked a number of times between these two buildings I can tell you without a doubt this was the longest and most nerve wracking of them all.

I made my way up to the fourth floor and back to the location HR was in. (Now I am not in this building very often so this was actually my first official visit to HR. Everything else has either been done in a conference room in a different location or via phone/email.

Now HR is located in a back corner, I would also imagine they don't get a lot of visitors there. Well I could be wrong it just seemed as I walk up to my reps desk he seemed to know someone was approaching and turned to see who it was.

Which is when he paused. Looked at me for a second, tilted his head and quietly asked:

"{his name}?"

"Yes."

He brighten up at that point and greeted me. Then he directed me to a little conference room they have up in their area. Told me to sit and make myself comfortable while he closed the door and sat down himself.

The first thing he said to me was this:

"I just want to say that in my eleven years of working HR have never encountered this. I do want to say before we go any further I think what you are doing is extremely brave. Second I also want to tell you that was one of the best letters I ever read regarding any situation. You obviously put a lot of thought and effort into it. It also didn't force or demand anything from us. I was really impressed."

So far so good.

"Now before I go into any of my question and ask you if you have any I just want to say HR is fully behind you in this. We want you to be able to do this successfully and we want you to be able to do it without any changes in your position or employment status."

"I can tell you this, you are the first I have ever encountered. So this is all new to me. Also I have talked to the director of HR and it is a first for her too. I do apologize but we are going to be learning a lot about this as we go. I hope you don't mind me using you as a source of information."

Can you day big sigh of relief?

With that we moved into a number of questions about things. Including some of my story on how I got to this point. Things I had to do yet. Time off that might be needed. We established a rough idea of how to go about telling my boss, manager and the rest of my team and the IT department. We talked concerned and issue. Maybe not resolving them but at least getting them out in the open so that everyone will know they are there.

My goal here was to start and open dialog and go from there. I didn't want to tell them how to do it. I want their opinions and hopefully just guide it along with what I feel would be best for me.

I am due to met the HR Director this week and they are going to talk to my boss. Which should follow with my manager.

Lots of back and forth, he stated he was very excite to have the opportunity to work with me to get through this.

I don't know who true all this is, but it does make me feel hopeful that this could go well. We shall see.

Oh and the awkward moment when I first showed up? Well being in HR he pulled up my ID badge, which is a bit out of date to put it mildly. His confusion was he was expecting someone else and I showed up. Let's just say we had a little chuckle about how the two didn't match.

I walked out of there feeling better but still woozy and in some shock that it all happened and it went as well as it did so far.

It is going to be an interesting few weeks as this news filters down to other people.

Even today I can't believe I did it.

Wish me luck!