There is a particular silence that follows a job loss. Not the silence of the office, the air-conditioner humming, the desk phone, but the silence of your personal phone.
The calls that used to punctuate your day: “Boss, can you sign off?”, “Can we borrow the projector?”, “Mum, send me 20k for data.” When the title drops, the dial tone changes.
A job is never just a salary. It is a social signal. In Kampala, your number becomes a helpline similar to the occasional 0800, but with a little charge attached.
Colleagues ring because you can approve leave. Relatives ring because you can solve a hospital bill. Old schoolmates reappear because you are now working at the ministry/NGO/bank. The calls are not always about you, they are about what your position can unlock.
Lose the job and the circuit rewires. Some lines go dead instantly. The people who needed the signature, not the person. Others fade slower, the check-ins that were really check-ups on your access. A few stay steady, the two friends who still ask how you slept, not how you can help.
The drop-off hurts more than the paycheck because you realise you were probably being used.
Money loss is measurable because you can budget around it. The evaporation of calls feels personal because it exposes how many interactions were transactional.
You start replaying conversations, was that “bro, how are you?” actually “bro, how are you placed?” It is a quiet audit of your social ledger, and it stings because it makes you question your own worth outside the role.
However, there are certain realities to hold onto. People circumnavigating your position are not necessarily malicious but they are responding to incentives. When the incentive disappears, so does the movement.
The calls that persist are your real network. They are usually small, unglamorous, and they do not need a reason to ring.
The title gave you temporary bandwidth. When you return it, you find out which contacts were saved to the SIM and which were saved to the handset.
According to Paul Mwebasa a retired economist, when the silence knocks in, you should never chase the noise.
“When those people go quiet, do not chase the noise. Resist the urge to prove you are still ‘useful’ by promising favors that you can’t fulfil,” he says.
He also advises that we should learn to catalogue the steady callers while we execute our work.
“Note who checks in without an ask or favor. Those are the relationships to water while you rebuild,” he advises.
There is need for one to redefine their value by practicing how to introduce themselves without the job prefix through personal skills, humor, reliability, these do not get revoked with a termination letter.
Not every dropped call is a loss; some are a filter, let some numbers go.
So, if you lost that job, would those phone calls still come in? Most of them will not. The ones that do are the answer to a different question.
Who calls you when there is nothing to gain? Keep those numbers. They were never dialing the job, they were dialing you.
