Something happened recently at my current job that makes me flashback to my first “being let go” situation.
I was Audience Services Manager at a small Seattle community theater. In order to be a full time position my hours were augmented by working in the Box Office.
After about a year in the position (a total of a year and a half at the theater, I started as a House Manager), things were very slow at the theater. There had long been talk about major changes coming. I often missed staff meetings because someone had to work the Box Office and the BO Manager actually had to do reports and such in the meetings. After one meeting in early October, he came up and just sort of offhandedly mentioned that he’s going to be keeping track of how much I’m really needed in the box office.
Considering that my duties as Audience Services Manager didn’t really require that much and they had just hired a part time Volunteer coordinator who doubled as a grant writer (at alot of theaters the Audiences Services and Volunteer Coordinator positions are combined)
…that put me on notice… I started walking into work everyday thinking that I could be fired.
Lo and behold, two weeks before Christmas… the actual busiest time at the theater… I get an email stating that my position and my employment as a fulltime employee were being terminated. Not a surprise… I thought that at least they’d show enough respect to let me go after the new year…but I guess sicne I was notified through email WHILE I was at work…that modicum of respect was not coming. I couldn’t feel too sorry for myself. Two other people had been let go as well. One had just bought a new house and the other had just got engaged.
SO now at my current job word just came down that we need to be logging our phone calls to see how busy we are. Luckily I’m pretty safe from the chopping block this time. Unfortunately two of the other people in my office (one who is barely doing a passable job and the other is having to adjust her hours to fit in her return to college course) might not be so lucky.
So anyone slse seen the writing on the wall long before the hammer fell?
Or had things happen at your current job that made you flashback to past firing situations?
I organized my department and got us union-certified. Had enough signatures to get automatic certification, so it should be easy-peasy, right?
The only problem was, while nearly everyone wanted to unionize, nobody wanted to stick their neck out in any kind of public way and openly declare that they were pro-union. So when the company appealed the certification on the basis of a (totally fabricated) community-of-interest issue, (having a couple of people lie through their teeth that other departments duplicated the same work as us, and it had ever been thus,) not one other person would stand up at the Labour Relations Board to rebut them.
So the LRB overturned the certification, and within a week nearly everyone in my department was let go. (With sweetheart severance packages, at least, to keep us from going back to the LRB.)
I have little doubt that the timing of the dismissal (which fell on my birthday) was no coincidence.
Oh yes. The hammer didn’t fall, but it was dangling, and I quit. It was the only time in 40 years that I felt my job was in any danger. I’ve never been fired or laid off.
My writing on the wall should have been when the new HR manager never talked to me.
Almost all of his communicating to me was via e-mail, even though his office was 10 feet from my cubicle, which he passed 50 times a day, to another cubicle where he’d sit and chat for an hour with the woman he’d hired from his former company.
That was the beginning of the end, although I only realized it in hindsight. I guess I could have started sucking up to him, but he was a clueless dweeb, and didn’t deserve any sucking up to. He’s been demoted several times since I left, which is slightly satisfying, but not as satisfying as other things I’ve imagined for him.
Oh, yeah. I’ve had two companies shot out from me. It was really clear in both cases. When I got the call from one supervisor I had absolutely no doubt what it would be, even though explicit announcement had been made. In the other case I left first, but that was simply because I had another job lined up, and i wanted to leave at my choosing, not theirs. It was clear we’d all be gone in a matter of weeks.
I was thinking this thread was going to be for stories from people who knew they screwed up big time and knew for sure that they’d get canned, but since this thread pertains more to getting laid off versus getting fired, I will share my story:
I worked as a contract employee for a well-known printer manufacturer, doing various tests on products in development. It was a great job and I enjoyed the people I worked with. I started there in December 2000 and everything was great, best job I ever had. That all changed in April 2004 when several sudden changes were being made to our structure and benefits were being cut one by one. Employee incentive programs were being cut and most of the “spirit” we once had had faded. By mid-summer morale had really tumbled and you could just tell that the people on our team were not as happy or as motivated about their jobs anymore. It was a very tense and uncomfortable environment and you could just feel it in the air. The company tried its hardest to avoid layoffs, but in October the inevitable happened and first round of layoffs claimed a few victims. While I was relieved to have survived the first round I knew it was only the beginning of things to come. The company had its “pets”, the badasses, the people who really knew their shit and knew it well, but I wasn’t one of them (just one of your average players), so I knew it was only a matter of time before I’d be cut along with several others. December 1, 2004 was the day they handed down the bad news, last day to work on December 10. At least I left there on good terms.
The general manager of the division making an announcement a few weeks before Christmas that there would be no lay offs till March or April. Less than a week later 2/3 of the shop were layed off. It saved the company a bunch of money, active employees on January 1 were going to receive bonuses equal to 12% of their previous year’s salary.
That happened to me with Former Employer. I made it through the first round of layoffs because I wasn’t an old-timer with FE. The second time I around I was suddenly transferred to a store where the department manager was well-known for getting rid of semi- longtime employees. She’d already done it with 2 of my former coworkers. The first day I walked in there, I could feel the doom catching in my throat.
I lasted exactly one month. I was called to the store manager’s office at the end of one of my shifts. The rest is history.
I later found out that I could’ve stayed with them had I agreed to go PT, like another coworker did. I didn’t want to take the $5/hour paycut, though.
