Dale Krankamp spent many years as the head of human resources for a large company. That company was facing a layoff. Twenty-five people were going to be let go, and it was Dale's job to have to break the news. I was with my chief operating officer, who I reported to at the time.
He was with us about a year. And he stood behind his chair and said, thank you. And then he said, oh, by the way, your name is on the list. And in those six little words, I became the 26th person. And for me, I'd been there 25 years.
So, six words ended 25 years. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine.
You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. A lot of people in the last several months have experienced what Dale experienced being laid off from a long-time job. How do you deal with that?
We'll talk with Dale about that today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.
Thanks for joining us. You've never had this happen. I've had this happen to me.
I don't know what you're talking about. It was a Monday morning. I came to work, working at a radio station. And the boss said, can you come into the office for a minute? And I said, sure.
So I came into his office and sat down, and he took a deep breath inside and said, I've decided it's in your best interest and in the best interest of the station for us to let you go. Completely out of the blue. You had no idea.
No clue. I'd been like salesman of the month two months before. You know, I mean, it was just a complete stunner, shocker.
Called my wife and say, I'm going to be home early today and be there tomorrow and be there the next day. Did you have kids at the time? Oh, yeah. In fact, we had one and we found out a month later, Mary Ann was pregnant with number two.
Oh, so that's even more scary. It was disorienting, right? And then a couple years later, another situation, I had an employer call and say, we don't think this is working out. And what I learned was that he had hired me for a job the guy he really wanted for the job was not available. And nine months later, the guy he really wanted for the job became available.
So the fact that it wasn't working out was really, no, the other thing was working out. But I've been through you. You've never Yeah, I mean, the first thought I had is I had a job in high school.
Yeah. And I didn't even know this. I was a dishwasher at Marathon Oil Company in Finley, Ohio. And I got fired because I wasn't a very good dishwasher.
I didn't know that. I mean, I was 16. It was one of my first jobs ever. And I loved it. Anyway, I guess I wasn't very good at it.
I think I was there about a week. I've told my kids that if I were their boss, I would fire them many times. Yeah, I've heard her say that.
They had a lawn business, you know, the Wilson Boys lawn and deck business. And she would be out there yelling at them, you're the worst worker ever. No, I didn't say that.
But I did say, I would fire you today, if I could. Well, a lot of our listeners over the last 12 months have had this new experience, this unexpected experience of finding themselves disoriented because they're no longer working where they thought they were secure and ensconced. And we're going to spend some time digging into that today with an old friend.
Yeah, this is sort of exciting. We've got a buddy from high school. Yeah. Of Bob Lapine's. Did you guys graduate the same year? Same year.
Yes. This is Dale Kreinkamp. Dale, welcome to Family Life Today. Thanks.
And Dale's wife, Deb, is joining us. Welcome. Thank you. Yeah, we were class of 74 back at Kirkwood High School in St. Louis. Home of the Fighting— Pioneers.
Pioneers. Yeah. I mean, did you guys know each other? We did.
Yeah. I mean, it was a big class. We had 800 people in our graduating class, 750, 800. So there were some people you knew really well and some people you knew because you—I don't remember, do you know if we had classes together?
We had some classes, but not much. Yeah, it's just one of those— All I want to know, Dale, is did you know Bob? Tell us about Bob.
Or what was his reputation? Oh, do you have any dirt? Oh, come on. Anything?
Our listeners are not interested in this. Bob was the coolest kid there. Oh, Dale, we needed a little dirt.
That was the best $20 I ever spent right there was to slip that to Dale and say— I mean, he had a band. He had hair, right? You remember any of that? He did have hair. He did have hair. That's what you remember.
We all did back then. Yeah. Dale has, since graduation, gone on. You spent 25, 30 years in healthcare industry, is that right? Actually closer to 40 with two different organizations.
And involved in HR. Yes. So you've been on both sides of this issue we're talking about.
You've had to call people into your office and say, I'm sorry, this isn't working out. Yes. And then you've had your employer call you in and say, we're making a shift. Yes. So you know a little bit about the disorientation we're talking about.
Oh, absolutely. When did it dawn on you as a part of your career that this is a significant life-altering moment in anybody's life when what they thought was solid is no longer solid underneath them? I think it was relatively early in my career, as we began to make some changes periodically, I would get involved in that.
It's not one of those things they taught you in school in terms of, okay, here's how we say goodbye to people. But for me, it became very important not only how we said goodbye, but how do we support those people as they exit. Because most often, they did nothing wrong.
These were people that were faithful to the organization, faithful to the work that they did. And for whatever set of circumstances, often economic, there just wasn't a need that there was before. And we needed to make a decision, and we needed to make a move. Yeah, it's a different situation if you're terminating for cause. Right. But if there's a downsize or if there's a change in direction and you've got good, faithful people and you're having to say this doesn't work for the corporate objective anymore, that's got to be, like, who wants that job?
Who wants your job is what I'm thinking. Nobody wanted it. Yeah. Nobody wanted it. And it's not one that you'll ever get people that will walk up to you and say, thank you, you did that really nice. Right. That's not what happened. I've had people come back later and say, you know, you did about the best that you could.
I was angry, but not at you. It was the circumstances. Sometimes it's even the source of blame. So, when something happens to us, we want to blame somebody, who do we blame? Well, we're going to blame the people that had the conversation with us. The middleman, the messenger. Right.
Yeah. And as you process this, in fact, you've written a book, a very helpful book, a devotional for people who are unemployed and for those who are married to the unemployed. It's a book called How Long, O Lord, How Long? Psalm 13, I think, is the one that starts with, O Lord, how long will you forget me? It's that whole feeling, and you talk about anger and anxiety and embarrassment, your sense of identity, purpose, your self-confidence, your questioning, despair.
Just a few things. Yes, this triggers such a range of emotion. It really does, and they aren't emotions that people think they're going to experience when they get that message. So, Bob, when you were told, we no longer need you, we're making a change, a decision, we often think, okay, I'll find something, this will be good, I got it, I'm in control, we're fine, all of that. And then as time goes on, especially if that journey lasts longer than you expect it to, because we often have expectations that are, okay, I'll find something in three months. Well, if you're four months into it, you're starting to say, okay, what's wrong with me, and those emotions just creep in, and we don't know what to do with them, so we kind of even deny that they're really there. And so those emotions are what can trip us up.
Let's go back to the moment when the earthquake happens. Talk about how you process that news and what's going on inside of somebody, and what do they do if, out of the blue, they get a call? I guess sometimes people are aware, they can kind of sense things are happening here at the company, things are changing, I don't know if my job's secure. Or they could read it in the paper like I did.
What do you mean? I mean, it's sort of funny, but it isn't. I mean, I was Detroit Lions chaplain, 33 seasons.
It's not a paid job, it's a volunteer job, really. And when a new coach comes in, you always have, okay, is the new coach going to keep the new chaplain type deal? And yeah, I was in my 33rd season, been through 12 coaches, because Detroit Lions didn't win a lot of football games, so they're always changing coaches. So anyway, I'm getting ready, they just hired a new coach. I'm getting ready to go in and meet him and talk about the future, and I pick up the Detroit Free Press, and I read a headline, and it's in the kitchen, it's on my phone, and I read a headline that said, Detroit Lions hire a character coach, just like the Patriots. And our new head coach has come from the Patriots, so we're doing what they did.
And I'm like, hey, I wonder what this is. And as I read it, I see the name of their chaplain, who I know is their character coach. For the Patriots.
For the Patriots. And I'm like, oh, I didn't know he was a character coach, I thought he was their chaplain. And then I read the name of the new guy for the Lions, and I'm like, I yelled to the kitchen, honey, I think I just got fired. And I did. And to this day, I've never gotten a call or an email.
I read it in the newspaper. So again, it wasn't my number one job. If it would have been, all the things that we're going to talk about, I would have experienced.
I didn't experience it. I mean, it was hurtful. It was like, at least give me a phone call or an email.
But if it's my source of income, oh boy. Man, hurt, anger, all the things you talk about in your book. The grief process is a real deal, isn't it? Yeah, it really is. And it is so much more so because you didn't make that decision.
Yeah. So, if you walked in and said, I know this isn't working, I'm leaving, you feel like you had some control over the decision. When someone else makes that decision for you, even if you wouldn't disagree that maybe it was time, there's just something about us not being able to control that decision that just starts us in a spiral and catches us by surprise. When the earthquake happens, when the explosion goes off, what's going on in somebody's heart and soul in that moment when they're trying to process what just happened? So, I think the first thing I'll just say is it's shock. For most people, it is just shock. Even if you had an understanding that it could happen, it's still the shock that it did happen. And all of a sudden, it's the reality that it changes.
So, mine was probably in some ways like a lot of other people, yet a little bit different because I'm on both sides of that equation. So, I was at a large medical center and as head of human resources, I had three responsibilities going into a restructuring. So, we'd made the decision that 25 leaders were going to lose their job and it was going to happen the following Monday. And so, I had to prepare those leaders to have the conversations with those 25 people. I had to figure out how do we support those 25 people that got that unexpected message of, I don't have a job. And then how do we communicate to an organization which had 4,000 employees, probably 1,000 on the medical staff, volunteers. What does this mean?
Because once that gets announced, everybody's saying, well, what's next? What does this mean? And I was with my chief operating officer who I reported to at the time, he was with us about a year. And he was the one pushing this and I kind of laid out here all the plans. And he stood behind his chair and said, thank you. And then he said, oh, by the way, your name is on the list.
And in those six little words, I became the 26th person. And then he said, you can stay through this event next week and finish your work if you want. If you want to leave today, I'll figure out how we deal with it. And he walked out the door.
Really? No, thank you. No, you've done a great job. No, no, nothing like that.
And in fact, the year before, I had done a project that had saved the organization a million dollars. Yeah. Okay, so Deb, he comes home that night. For that day, did you walk out that day? No, I stayed. I really wanted to make sure that we did it well, that we handled that as best we could.
And so I did, I think I called her. And my heart just sunk and it more sunk for him than for me. I felt like he was so stressed in the job that, you know, this was God talking to him that he needed to get out of there. But then it was the reality of the emotions and everything that put us on this rollercoaster of what's next. So when you got the call, your first impulse wasn't a panic, how are we going to pay the bills or what's going to happen or how does this affect me?
You were thinking, how does this affect my husband? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. His emotions, his sense of self, dignity, all of that?
Yes, definitely. Is that common, do you think, Dale, for a wife or a spouse who learns about their husband or wife getting fired? Do they react with empathy or do they react with protection for themselves?
Or maybe both impulses are there. You know, I think it depends upon that relationship and where it is. And I think the character of the man. I'm looking at you, Deb, and I think, oh, you trusted Dale in terms of his character, his provision, and who he was as a man and a man of God.
Is that kind of true? Definitely, definitely. I knew he was all together. I knew that he cared about the people.
I knew that he worked so hard that he would find something else, but I knew it would be so hurtful because he loved the organization. And I'm guessing not every wife responds as admirable as Deb did. No.
No, they don't. And, yeah, for me, I had been there 25 years, so six words ended 25 years. Wow. You know, I had more or less grown up there, and so there was a lot to process as well as trying to figure out how do we still hold it together to make it good for the people that we had to meet with and do. And in the back of your mind, had you thought at all with the 25 people being removed that maybe your job was on the bubble? So, I've always known that. But, again, the project the year before, and then this chief operating officer was looking at efficiency statistics, and my division was in the top 10 percent of every benchmark we looked at.
So, it wasn't like you'd have a reason. Right. And ultimately, he told me later, he said, you know, you have a great team, and you have a good number, too, and you make more money than them.
So, I'm saving money. Wow. Walk us through the stages and the emotions that you went through, because I'm assuming you were angry and hurt, especially at first, or maybe shocked. Yeah, I was hurt. I was hurt because I had given my life to that place, and to see it end that way just didn't seem right.
I'm angry for you. You know, and then it's how do you tell people, and so I had a meeting the following Monday with my staff, and the rumors started to swirl that there was something else going on that was coming up. And that was hard to tell people that had come from other organizations to work for me, or that I had brought into their career and mentored and all of a sudden to say I'm not going to be here was hard. In my position, so, Dave, let's go to you. There's only so many football teams that have chaplains.
If you really wanted to continue a career as a chaplain, where are you going to go to do football as a chaplain? And all the other teams were calling me. Right. Just that day, they all started calling. He's available.
He's available. Because you had such a winning record. Because I had such a great winning record.
Yeah, nobody was calling. And so, we were one of the top 35 employers in the metropolitan area, so you just knew the type of job that I had, those, you know, don't grow on trees. And I wanted to stay in St. Louis, that's where family was, that's where kids and everybody else were.
And at that time, I had, we had two sons in college and one in private high school. Oh! So, these were what we call the heavy cash flow years. Yeah, right. So, it's— We're feeling it for you. Yeah, it just, there's just so much that goes through your head at that point in time.
Yeah. I remember when I got fired the first time from a job. First of all, calling Mary Ann, in the back of my mind is this thought, is she going to think there's something defective about me? Is she going to think, what did you do? This is your fault.
I mean, I'm feeling the weight of keeping my job is my responsibility, and I just dropped the ball, and is she going to think less of me as a husband? And then telling friends. It's embarrassing. Sure, it's embarrassing. And they say, what happened? And there's this instinct to want to say, it wasn't me, I didn't, you know. But you also don't want to be saying, well, this lousy company.
Right. And it's a very awkward place to be. And people don't talk about it, Bob.
That is the challenge. That's why unemployment is kind of the elephant in the room. People know about it, but the person who loses their job doesn't talk about it.
And why is that? I think it's the embarrassment, the shame that it happened. So, I got cut from the baseball team in high school.
It was before social media, so I didn't have anything to post, but I wasn't going to come home, pick up the phone, and start calling all my friends to say, hey, guys, I got cut from the baseball team. You just kind of let that information drift out when it can. And so, people just don't talk about it.
They just kind of let it go. And then those conversations aren't easy conversations. How do you say, I'm okay, because you know they're worried about you. How do you say, I don't know what's next, but I'm okay with that. Even maybe when I'm not okay with that, because you're trying to reassure other people. Because I think we just have this instinct to want to reassure everybody that we're okay. And then inside you're going, you know, what's next? I don't know.
Well, I was looking at the back of your book, The Cooper-Ross Change Curve. You know, and I'm looking and I'm thinking, boy, oh, boy, this is, at the very beginning, shock, confusion, fear, denial, and then anger. And it keeps going. But I'm like, oh, I've been there. I'm sure you were there.
I'm sure you were there. I mean, you know, one thing that was interesting being in the Lions locker room for 33 seasons is watching players get fired. They call it cut in the NFL, but it's fired. And it's traumatic for these young men. Well, we also had a son that had gone through it three times. Yeah, Cody played for the Lions, our youngest, and was fired three different times and rehired. He has four different Detroit Lions jersey numbers because each time he came back, they gave him a different number. And three of them were injuries and then he healed and they came back. But watching him go through it, but watching players go through it, all that. There's shock.
There's confusion. I can remember being in locker rooms before games and guys would be all fired up. And I'd walk over and I go, dude, man, you are like ready to go. He goes, they cut me last year. That team cut me. And I'm like, oh, so this is more than just I want to win a football game.
I'm going to prove my old employer they should have never fired me. It's, I mean, anger in a locker room. So you experience that. Everybody experiences that, right? That confusion, that shock, that fear. Here's the big one I want to know about fear. Because there's real fear that you feel, especially as a man, if you're a provider, I have to provide. And a woman, even a single mom.
Yeah, there you go. I think there's a, that is the interesting thing is there are a lot of single parents that are losing jobs and they're by themselves, which is exceptionally hard on them. Fear is there because we love certainty and being unemployed is uncertain. If I told you, Ann, you've lost your job, but you're going to have a new job in four months, you'd say, okay, that's longer than I want, but mentally I can handle it. There's just uncertainty as to when that's going to be. It's when it's going to happen.
We don't know when it's going to happen. And that brings in the fear as you try and figure it out. And people then go into what I call the will questions. They start saying to themselves, well, will I ever find another job? Will it pay as much as the last job? Will I be successful? Will we have to move to another city?
Will I lose my house? And there aren't answers for those questions. And when I talk to people about it, I tell them, I saw a poster one time which was really good. It said, worry is a conversation we have with ourselves about things we can't change. Prayer is a conversation with God about things that He can. And it's kind of a reminder to people that in the midst of those fears, we've got to give it to God because we can't do it. We don't have the answers. How did your faith help you in the midst of this earthquake that was going on? Oh, if I didn't have it and I didn't have Deb, I'd have been a basket case.
Because it did, it starts to attack everything. One of the worst things we do is we compare. So, if the four of us were in the same organization and we all were told on the same day our jobs are gone, which has happened to a lot of people today with COVID, if Dave finds a job in three months and you find a job in four months and Ann in five and I'm still there at six, I'm going, well, what's wrong with me?
Right. Why did they get a job and I didn't get a job? And it just really tears at the fabric of who we are. That's when the confidence starts to fall. We've got somebody sitting right now listening to this broadcast, either on a radio station or a podcast.
They've been out of work or furloughed because of COVID or other reasons for maybe months. What would you say to them? It's going to be okay. God's got you. But you're going to go through some difficult times. This is a rollercoaster. So, strap yourself in.
It is going to be emotional highs and lows that you don't expect. But God's got you. He's not going to let you fall and out of this, you're going to look back and you're going to be amazed at His hand in it. But when you're in the barrel, it's not going to be easy. But God's got you.
And I've looked back on the two firings and can see now that in both of those situations, I wound up somewhere better, that I never would have gone on my own, that it was God dislodging me from where I would have stayed because of what He had next for me. You can't see that in the moment. No, and I'm thinking the same thing. I'm sitting in this chair right here with Ann at Family Life Today because I'm not working with the Lions.
I don't think I would have been able to do both. Right. And at the moment, I'm like, I can't believe they fired the best chaplain in the NFL. What are you thinking?
Everybody is wondering that. But here we are, and God had a plan behind the whole thing. Yeah, and this is where, in the moment, to have someone who can coach you in the midst of what you're going through. I think it's so helpful, and this, Dale, is why I love what you've done in the devotional you've written, How Long, O Lord, How Long? Devotions for the unemployed and those who love them.
This is such an important book. We want to make it available this week to any of our listeners who can make a donation to help support the work of Family Life Today. Your donations make these kinds of conversations possible. You help us reach hundreds of thousands of people every day with practical, biblical help and hope for the challenges they face in their marriages and in their families, the challenges like the challenge of being unemployed. When you make a donation today, be sure to request your copy of the book, How Long, O Lord, How Long?
And let me just say, you ought to get a copy of this book and pass it on to someone you know who has been laid off. Help them out. Reach out and give them a gift, a copy of Dale's book.
Again, the book is our way of saying thanks. When you make a donation to support the ministry of Family Life Today, request it. When you go online at FamilyLifeToday.com to donate or when you call 1-800-358-6329.
That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word Today. If you are a regular Family Life Today listener and from time to time you miss one of our programs because of your schedule, you can download the new Family Life mobile app on any of your devices. And you can listen whenever it's convenient for you, or you can listen to past programs. The app is brand new, it's easy to use, and all you have to do is go to your app store, type in the name Family Life, and you'll find it there.
It's free to download. Again, look for the Family Life mobile app in your app store and download it, and you can catch up on programs you may have missed over the past several weeks. And we hope you can join us again tomorrow. We're going to talk about how our job is connected to our sense of self and how we can experience some real emotional disequilibrium when we lose a job. Dale Kreinkamp will be back again with us tomorrow. I hope you can be with us as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Bob Lapeen. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.
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