A fellow team member and GE Proud member requested a short
meeting with me a while back. That
meeting took place today. Although I was
somewhat curious as to why he asked for the time, my curiosity was outweighed
by my busy-ness. As we sat in the conference
room this afternoon, he proceeded to tell me that after 37 years, he was being
let go – his position was eliminated. I
immediately felt awful and expressed my sadness to him along with my sincere
offer to help him in any way that I could.
To my surprise, he didn’t want to talk at all about himself; he wanted
to thank me and commend me for the work I’ve done in making GE Proud a reality as
well as last year’s GE participation in Pridefest. He wanted to reassure me that I’m doing good
work and that change is taking place and that I should continue. Being around my own age, he reminded me that in
“our day” such things would never have even been thought about in the
workplace. He also reminded me that back
in January when his long-time partner passed away, his supervisor told him to
expect to have the same bereavement that a legal spouse would have. Trying to fight back the tears, I kept trying
to bring the conversation back to him and his situation, but he kept bringing
it back to me and GE Proud and change.
How touching his unselfishness and his hopefulness was! I’m still brought to tears when I think about
the conversation. I will miss him.
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