One morning in September, some former colleagues I had worked with at a print newspaper woke up to news that nobody had told them about.
There had been no official message the night before, no urgent meeting, no manager gathering the team to explain what was happening, and not even a simple human attempt to reduce the shock. It was just a normal morning in a normal month. They went to work as usual and discovered that the newspaper had closed, the publishing company had stopped operating, and everything had ended in the same way many painful things end in the world of work: suddenly, without an apology, without an explanation, and without enough time for people to understand how an important part of their professional lives had ended so easily.
I had left around three months earlier. I do not say this to pretend that I was smarter than everyone else, or that I could see what others could not. But I had started noticing small signs. They did not say anything directly, but they said everything to anyone who was paying attention.
The rhythm was changing. Decisions were no longer explained. There was a heavy silence in places where there should have been communication. Daily details started to feel confused. It was that strange feeling you have when you are inside a boat that has started to lean slightly, while everyone continues to act as if the sea is calm.
During that period, I understood that something was not going well, so I decided to leave the boat before it sank. It was not an easy decision. Leaving before the end requires a different kind of courage. You have to trust the signs before they become official news. You also have to accept that some people may think you are worrying too much, until the day comes when you discover that your anxiety was sometimes only early awareness.
When the Ending Begins Before We See It
I remembered that story last Sunday morning. I was sitting in a café, as I sometimes do when I feel that the week has passed faster than my ability to understand it.
I only wanted to drink my coffee slowly, open my laptop, and try to organise the ideas, worries, and questions that had been building up in my mind. There are mornings when you do not go to a café to work. You go there to recover your inner voice from the noise of everyday life.
You watch people without meaning to. You hear small parts of their lives. Sometimes, a simple sentence from a nearby table explains something you have felt for years but never knew how to name.
I was sitting in my usual corner, between the smell of coffee and the movement of the door opening and closing, when a conversation between two young women caught my attention. They were sitting at a table not far from mine.
I was not trying to listen to them. Or maybe I was listening in the way all of us do when a specific word touches something inside us.
I heard one of them say, in Moroccan Darija, “Jraw 3liya,” meaning: “They fired me.”
My attention stopped there.
Some words do not pass quietly, especially when you know what it means to become too emotionally connected to your job, or to watch a colleague suddenly disappear from the company system as if they had never been part of the place.
One of the women was telling her friend about the day she lost her job. She said the manager called her during her lunch break.
That detail alone made the story feel cruel.
It was not a call at the end of the day. It was not a planned meeting. It was not a conversation that showed respect for someone who had spent part of her life working for the company.
It was only an unexpected phone call in the middle of a normal day, while she was trying to eat and breathe for a few minutes between her daily tasks.
She said the manager did not normally call her. So, when she saw the name on the screen, she understood before answering that something had ended.
Then she added:
“Without any introduction, she told me: We no longer need you at work, so please return the laptop and all the company equipment to the office.”
What surprised me was not the dismissal itself. We are no longer surprised by this kind of news.
What caught my attention was her tone.
She did not sound broken. She did not speak like someone who had been betrayed. Her voice sounded closer to clarity than pain.
It was almost as if the thing that upset her most was not losing the job, but that the phone call came during lunch and interrupted a normal moment she deserved to have.
Maybe, unlike my generation, she never entered the workplace believing that loyalty would always be answered with loyalty. And perhaps that is why she received the news with such clarity.
The Expiry Date We Cannot See
There is a big difference between saying that a relationship has ended and saying that something has expired.
When we say that a working relationship has ended, we think about a broken promise, a goodbye, or disappointment.
But when we say that something has expired, we are talking about an administrative matter. Something cold. Something that may have been planned, even if the date was hidden from us.
It is like a carton of milk in the refrigerator. When it expires, you do not sit down and ask why it disappointed you. You knew from the beginning that it had an expiry date printed on it.
The problem with a job is that it comes without a visible date.
You do not know when your role will expire. But somewhere, inside a meeting, a document, or an Excel sheet, that date may already be known by someone else.
This is exactly what I learned from the newspaper story.
The newspaper had not closed yet, but the date was already being written somewhere. Maybe it was inside the company’s financial accounts. Maybe it was inside decisions made by the owners. Maybe it was inside meetings that journalists, editors, and other employees were not invited to attend.
Every morning, they continued to enter the office believing that the newspaper was still their newspaper. They believed that the place to which they had given their time and effort would at least give them the right to know before the end.
But the world of work does not always give you that right.
Sometimes, it hides the expiry date from you until the last moment and lets you discover it while you are standing outside the door.
The Psychological Contract Between the Employee and the Company
There is one contract we sign at work, and there is another contract that does not appear on paper.
The first contract is legal, clear, cold, and limited. It includes the position, salary, responsibilities, and working hours.
The second contract is psychological, and it is more dangerous.
We enter companies believing in an unspoken agreement:
I will give you my time, my effort, my loyalty, my worries, and hours of my life that will never return. In exchange, you will give me stability, recognition, growth, and maybe a future.
But the company often does not read the agreement in the same way.
The company may be silently saying:
We will keep you as long as your presence makes sense in the numbers, as long as your role is necessary, and as long as your cost remains acceptable.
When any of these things changes, everything else can start to change.
I am not saying that all companies are evil. That would be too simple and unfair.
There are respectful organisations, good managers, real teams, and professional experiences that build people and open doors for them.
But the difficult truth is that when the numbers change, the language also changes.
Excel does not know that you stayed late at work. It does not know that you came to the office while you were sick. It does not know that you defended the company when everyone else was criticising it.
Excel knows only one question:
Do we still need this position?
And when the answer becomes no, the expiry date may arrive before you even know it exists.
A whole generation grew up believing that work was a relationship based on loyalty.
For many people, a job was a promise of stability. It was a place where a person entered while still young and hoped to leave many years later with dignity.
The past was not perfect. It also included injustice and difficult working conditions. But it at least carried a clear promise: give the institution your loyalty, and it will give you part of your future.
Today, that promise has changed.
The company no longer says this clearly. Instead, it says something else without saying it directly:
Give me your performance today, and I will give you your salary today. But the future is not a guaranteed part of the agreement.
This does not mean that we should become careless people at work. It does not mean that we should lie, cheat, give the minimum effort, or enter every company while looking for the nearest exit.
On the contrary, work honestly. Create value. Learn. Help others. Leave a positive impact wherever you go.
But do not give your entire life to a place that can remove you from the system in thirty seconds or close a newspaper on a September morning without informing you the night before.
Do not make your work email the centre of your identity. Do not make your access card your only sense of belonging. And do not make your salary your only definition of security.
A salary is not security. A salary is a monthly appointment.
Real security is your ability to stand again if that appointment stops.
Real Security Begins Outside the Company
Security means having a name outside the institution.
It means having a skill that does not disappear when your job title disappears. It means having professional relationships that do not vanish when your company email is closed. It means being able to start again without feeling that you have returned to zero.
Security means building your own path while helping the company build its path.
It means giving your employer the best of what you have, without forgetting that your biggest long-term project is yourself.
This is why I no longer see side work as a form of betrayal.
In a time when jobs and companies can expire without a public date, having another professional path becomes a form of wisdom, not a lack of loyalty.
When I think today about that newspaper, I do not remember only the closure. I remember the small signs that came before it.
The problem was not simply that the newspaper closed. Every project can end.
The problem was that the ending was being prepared somewhere while people continued to work as if tomorrow was guaranteed.
This is one of the lessons nobody teaches us at the beginning of our professional careers:
Not every ending begins on the final day.
Some endings begin much earlier, inside small details, silence, confusion, unexplained meetings, and that strange feeling that something is changing.
This is why I now understand loyalty differently.
Loyalty is beautiful when it is mutual. But when it comes from only one side, it is no longer loyalty. It becomes an uncalculated sacrifice, and perhaps an elegant form of naivety.
Work honestly, but do not forget yourself inside the place where you work.
Leave a positive impact, but do not leave your entire life there.
Be loyal, but do not be unaware.
Keep your bag half ready, not because you want to leave, but because you have finally understood that in today’s world, the expiry date is often known by them… and hidden from you.