The Dead Badge
Processing identity severance
What started with the box on your desk just got more complicated. Now you need to process the shock of job loss without numbing or spiraling — and the situation is shifting faster than your first approach can handle.
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Part of this story
The Box on Your Desk
→They handed you a box. Now you're standing in the parking lot wondering who you are without a title. Navigate the first hour of job loss.
Part of the quest
Job Loss & Identity
→The box on your desk, the dreaded 'what do you do?' question, the financial reckoning, and the reinvention that follows. Navigate losing a job when your identity was tied to it.
What you'll learn from The Dead Badge
This scenario focuses on Processing identity severance — a critical skill inside the broader career domain. You'll face a decision where the instinctive response is often the wrong one. After you make your choice, you'll see exactly what happened in the other person's head and why it mattered. The scenario is part of The Box on Your Desk, a full interactive story inside the Job Loss & Identity quest.
Skills you'll build in Job Loss & Identity
More scenarios in this quest
You're standing in the parking lot holding a cardboard box with a plant and a coffee mug. Your badge doesn't work anymore. The person you were this morning — the title, the team, the purpose — just vanished.
This is the moment you've been building toward. Answering 'so what do you do?' when your answer just disappeared — except now the stakes are real and there's no rehearsal. What you do next matters.
You've faced the hardest part. Now turn what you've learned into something sustainable — a way to process the shock of job loss without numbing or spiraling not just today, but every time this situation returns.
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