I've been laid off six times. It was a surprise once, the first time, an early job at Wal-mart. The other five times I could see it coming (and three of those t

I've been laid off six times. It was a surprise once, the first time, an early job at Wal-mart. The other five times I could see it coming (and three of those times I had already started actively interviewing elsewhere). Three of those jobs were small businesses in the video game industry, where layoffs after a game is finished and released are pretty common. I was actually more surprised that I somehow didn't get laid off at a previous corporation that had multiple rounds of deep layoffs, especially considering how often I had been laid off in the past. In fact I found out when the department head put in his notice that I was on the list of one of those layoffs, but so many people quit in the meantime that they didn't need to lay off as many people, so he was able to take me off the list. I stayed there a little too long, through inertia and also I had so many 1 to 1.5 year job "hops" from all those previous layoffs I felt I should stick around a bit longer to show I am able to stick with a company when they let me. It would have been a blessing if they had laid me off, though, it would have forced me to find a much better job much earlier.