She said she intended to communicate that expectation in her next service conversation with Victor.
After the call I made tea and sat with it for longer than the tea required.
The call was not a triumph. I want to be clear about this because the shape of the story might suggest it should feel like one. What it felt like was: the evidence of the value of work that had not been valued, arriving too late to change the decision that undervalued it. This is useful information. It is not a reversal. The work was already done. The dismissal was already done. What Diane’s call confirmed was what I had already known: the work mattered, the knowledge was specific, the transition had been inadequately planned.
Knowing this did not give me my job back. It gave me something more durable: a clear account of my own competence, from someone who had observed it over seven years, at the moment when I needed to be able to describe it to people who hadn’t.
I wrote the brief overview that afternoon and sent it to Diane. General, industry-framed, as she’d asked. My background in freight coordination operations, the scope of work I’d managed, the type of role I was looking for.
She forwarded it to Owen Reed.
The Consulting Agreement and What It Was
Victor called on a Wednesday evening, twelve days after the quarterly review.
He used the formal voice. He described the Alder situation without using the words “service exception notice” but with the weight of someone who had received one. He said the transition had created some challenges. He said Luke was getting there but the specific account history was taking time to develop.