The Last Badge Swipe (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798244469295)

At sixty-seven, David Mercer thought he had survived the hardest part of his life.

Nine years after beating cancer, David is still working-still proving himself-still competing against colleagues young enough to be his children. When his employer quietly labels his product "Divest" and announces layoffs just weeks before Christmas, David learns what survival in modern corporate America really means: you can do everything right and still be optimized out.

David's office is in Texas. His management chain is four levels deep in New Jersey. Hiring has shifted, cultures have consolidated, and the cafeteria no longer serves food his chemo-altered body can tolerate. No one is cruel. No one is malicious. The system simply moves on.

At home, his wife Elena-also a cancer survivor-keeps a different kind of life running. She sings in the church choir, cooks in the kitchen, and teaches ESL Bible study over Zoom. None of it is paid. All of it matters. Together, they face a future where Social Security and a dwindling 401(k) can replace only forty percent of the income they once relied on-and the mortgage and car payments don't care about dignity.

The Last Badge Swipe is a quiet, unsentimental Christmas story about age, work, cultural displacement, and the invisible math behind modern layoffs. It is not about villains. It is about systems. And it is about the moment when a man realizes that being discarded by one world does not mean he has nothing left to give.

This is a story for anyone who has ever been told-politely-that they no longer fit.

Author: John Bailey
ISBN-13: 9798244469295
Publisher: Independently Published
Language: English
Published: 01/18/2026
Pages: 42
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.15lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.09d