Was I the problem? (spoiler, I was)

Back when the layoffs in tech were just starting, there were some scarily bad examples of how not to layoff people hitting the news. One leaked zoom call in particular is burnt into my brain.

After seeing a couple of these in the news, I started thinking about being in that situation but from all the different perspectives - someone getting laid off, someone at the company that doesn't get laid off but sees their colleagues affected, the person doing the laying off and the decision makers who don't make their presence felt - and all the different scenarios. That's the way my brain works.

After going through all those scenarios in my head, I thought I'd ask my team how they thought about things like this to see if they thought the same as me. At the time, there was no mention or reason to think we were going to go through layoffs too.

"Hey, everyone saw the layoff video from Company X yeah? If you were getting laid off, how would you want them to do it? One group zoom call or something different?"

About 10 minutes later this I realised I had accidentally thrown a mentos into a coke and the reaction was not what I was expecting at all.

"Why are you asking this?? Are we getting laid off?"

"You can't talk about things like this!"

"BRB, going to have an anxiety attack"

"Never thought about it before"

It appeared I'd accidentally given 10 people a dose of Sunday Scaries but on a Wednesday.

I was thinking that everyone would be thinking about these things like me and we could share our thoughts and ideas. That was the first mistake I made - just because I think about these things and go through all the scenarios doesn't mean others do.

The second mistake was not putting enough context to the question. In my head I'd be thinking about this on and off for weeks but when that question pops up in slack out of no where, to others it feels like an attack on their senses.

Mistakes I made numbers 3-76 I'll cover another time.

But the part that still surprises me is that others don't think about these scenarios. I feel like if I didn't, I'd be unprepared when they happen. So even if they are unlikely or negative or scary to think about, I still go through as many scenarios & outcomes as I can.

What if I was laid off tomorrow? What if the industry I'm in implodes overnight? What if I win Powerball next week? What would I do if I lost by job and couldn't find another one?

I think through things like this regularly. It doesn't stress me out or worry me to think about these things, they haven't happened but if they do I feel like I'm somewhat prepared to handle the situation.

That's normal, right? Or am I the odd one out and most people prefer not to think about these things?