It always ends with cake

The recent weeks had been strangely traumatic and emotional for me.

I had made the decision that my time at work was done.  It had been almost five years in the same job and it was time to move on.  I was quite happy in my job, I liked what I did and I had a genuine affection for the people around me.  So it was with much sadness that I realised that I needed to change my surroundings not because of any personal dissatisfaction, but because I needed to continue my development with new challenges.

The final weeks at work had been challenging as I tried frenetically to complete outstanding tasks and to ensure that no one would be burdened with my departure.

However, time keeps moving and eventually I found myself standing in the same spot that we had all gathered at so many times before.  It was the standard farewell location where the team would congregate and where the formal goodbyes would be made.  The surreal experience was that now I was the one being surrounded, I was now the focus of the surrounding crowd.

I stood with a smile on my face as my five years were condensed into a few short sentences, a handshake and friendly applause.  I was given a card and then there was the cake.  The gathered crowd moved swiftly towards the cake and then after the socially acceptable amount of time has passed, everyone moved back to their desks and the noise of tapping keyboards restarted.

I looked at the remains of the cake and I couldn't quite shake the thought that my five years of work had been reduced to a few slices of a cake.