Remember to breathe. Especially in the meeting itself, but before and after too. It’s a stressful operation, especially the first time.

Don’t make any big decisions 24 hours after, allow yourself time to decompress and evaluate your options. Also be careful not to burn bridges on a whim. Sometimes that’s the correct course of action, and if you’ve already decided that cutoff is needed, then stick to the plan. Just be aware that high emotions can make you do or say things you may come to regret down the line. Less is more in the immediate aftershock.

Make sure you understand every document before you sign it, and keep in mind that you can refuse your signature on any or all of them. EDIT: a clarification: make sure you understand what the document actually says, not what HR or whomever says it says, before signing. HR can get real interpretive when they’ve got a dozen people to get signatures from and aren’t under oath. Someone else mentioned taking documents home for review and I think that’s excellent advice.

If you have personal accounts logged into your work machine, log out of them and/or rotate the passwords for them.

Apply for unemployment benefits.

Be mindful about how much you drink or use drugs. If you find yourself using more, or if someone near you remarks on it, see if you can stop or cut back. If you can’t, seek help. That’s general purpose advice, but post-layoff is a particularly dangerous time.

Take stock of how much money you have, what your current expenditures are, and where you can cut. Subscriptions especially are good targets for immediate suspension or cancellation.

Keep in touch with your cool co-workers, if any. If it’s a mass layoff, a group text can be useful for sharing job leads, commiseration, or notification if your ex-employer tries to pull any bullshit.

That’s all I can think of for now. Good luck, and I hope for the best for you. But even if things turn out for the worse, it’s a bad day before better ones ❤️