Since a startup restructuring cost him his job in May, a Bay Area technology veteran has carried a handmade sign into local coffee shops three days a week, inviting strangers who have been laid off to pull up a chair and talk.

The sign Kris Kealoha Giron props on his table reads, “Got laid off? You’re not alone. Let’s chat!” He calls the project The Open Chair and offers free resume help, interview preparation and conversation to anyone who sits down. More than four months in, he says, every single person who has taken the seat has described the same thing: rejection, ghosting and the feeling of going through it alone.

There is no shortage of company. U.S. employers announced 97,006 job cuts in May, up 16 percent from the month before and 3 percent from a year earlier, according to the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Companies announced more than 1.2 million cuts in 2025, the most for any year since 2020. And the hiring side offers little comfort: the economy added 29,000 jobs in September, according to the jobs report released Friday, well short of forecasts, with July and August figures revised down by about 60,000. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says 27.1 percent of unemployed workers have been looking for more than six months.

Mr. Giron’s own search has looked much like that. Applications go unanswered. Who he reaches out to don’t write back. “Coming home and telling my wife I’ve been rejected from another five jobs today,” he wrote in an essay for CNBC published this month. He has a family that loves him, he said, and he was still lonely.

If loneliness was the problem, he figured, community might be the answer. Putting up the sign was hard; it meant telling every stranger who walked past that he had lost his job. On his first day at a new shop, the only open seat was a small table in the back, beside the napkins, lids, sugar and cream. It turned out to be the best spot in the room, he said, because everyone passes the napkin station eventually.

One young woman passed four times that day, her eyes on the sign each time, before she sighed and sat down. A recent college graduate, she had finally gotten her foot in the door at a local company, then was laid off a year later from her first real job. “She was exactly who I was doing this experiment for,” Mr. Giron wrote.

The helping part came naturally. Mr. Giron has spent 25 years building and leading customer experience teams in human resources and payroll software, from Intuit early on to Gusto, Salsa and Lumber. He wanted to be a teacher, inspired by Ms. Miller, his fourth grade teacher and volleyball and basketball coach. Life took him to tech instead, but he coached basketball and became a mentor. “I’ve spent my whole career saying the thing I’m most proud of is helping others grow their careers,” he wrote.

One man at the table had been laid off after 10 years at the same company and had not touched a resume or sat for an interview in a decade. Mr. Giron has been helping him rebuild, including teaching him to use AI tools to compete in the current market. Another visitor landed a job quickly. When she told him, he wrote, he felt excitement and relief for her and for himself, proof the sign could do more than make someone feel less alone.

Not every story gets an ending. The recent graduate from that first day connected with him on LinkedIn, then went quiet, and he never heard from her again. “I’ve made peace with that,” he wrote. “The sign says ‘Let’s chat,’ not ‘Let’s stay in touch.’”

His own search gained ground over the summer, then stalled. If an offer doesn’t come soon, Mr. Giron said, he will pick up work with a friend’s events business through the holidays. The sign stays. “It doesn’t take much to make someone feel a little bit less lonely,” he wrote, “just an open invitation and the willingness to go first.”