Tears

I cried yesterday.

A colleague, A, whom I'm close with suddenly announced in the team meeting that he's leaving the company. He's the guy who always played keyboard for me when I sang for the company dinners.

When the meeting ended, we got back to our seats. His seat was to my right. He told me he would try to settle all his outstanding work by next week.

I said I don't care about that, I will miss him. And then I cried. He must have been very shocked.

Another colleague sitting behind me asked what happened, and A told him I'm feeling upset. I suppose the people around me all saw it. That's embarrassing.

I typed out a question from the CG director through tears. And then I said bye to A and left. I didn't realise he followed me until I got out the office door.

He told me people leave jobs and move on all the time. And he said we have worked together since I joined the company. Don't cry on my last day okay. And maybe a couple more things. Actually he didn't seem to have clearly thought out what he wanted to say.

I asked him some questions. Why is he quitting, where's he working at next, and so on. And I said again that I will miss him. I tried to say there would be no one to perform with me anymore, but all I managed to say was "no one, no one, no one". Couldn't speak properly when crying.

A junior from the company came to the lift lobby at that time. He must have wondered what the fuck was going on.

I told A "see you on Monday" and left. On the way home I read the game users line chat and saw them complaining about a bug, and messaged A to look into it.

Then I went home.

I haven't really chatted with him about non-work related stuff for a long time. We didn't have lunch together that frequently these days. But back in my first year we chatted a lot and always had lunch together as a team. The two of us even went to watch a piano recital together. It was just too sudden for me.

We are the only remaining planners in the current project now. He really couldn't have picked a worse time to leave. August is gonna be a difficult month for sure.

My afterthought about this... is that I'm really bad at farewells. And it's not even the actual farewell yet. I hardly ever cry from tear jerking shows, but when it comes to real people I'm pretty emotional. Figures.