One year ago today

Dear Pointy-haired ex-Boss:

One year ago today, you laid me off. That was the single most traumatic day of my life, surpassing even the deaths of my parents, and setting off a chain of events that I still have not recovered from fully.

As I sit here, I have to fight myself to keep the bile and venom out of this missive. No amount of swearing, insults, and taunts will make up for the financial hardships, the clinical depression, and the anger I’ve experienced over the last year. Neither will I come close to putting in print anything that resembles a threat, simply because you’re not worth it.

So, you ask, why am I sending this to you? The answer is easy; to thank you for laying me off. Because of what you did, I was forced to look for employment, and I found my dream job. I am back in Civil Service, for the agency that is the ultimate dream employer for a technical type like me.

I’m now working with people who respect my opinions and skills, which never happened there. I’m working with people who encourage me to pursue my educational goals, not the politically correct educational vision of my former management. I’m working with some nifty new technology, in a leadership position, which would never have happened there. And, I’m working with people from your employer in a healthy contractual relationship, without any hard feelings. I’m happy to go to work each day.

Face it, I was not long for that job. I was miserable for quite some time, and I hated to come in to the office each morning. Had I finished my degree when I anticipated, I would have been actively job hunting and likely quitting now. You merely cut me loose a year before I was going to be leaving under my own power.

So let me reiterate, thank you. You did me several evils, and I’m better off. Prosperity truly is the best kind of revenge.

VunderBob
Sorry, no cussing. I’m considering actually sending this to him.

I wouldn’t; no good can come of it really.

Yay for Vunderbob!

Glad to hear this good news.

But don’t send the letter.

Your Evil boss will never get it.

It might be cathargic to send it to this vile person, but really it won’t change a thing in the grand scheme of the cosmos.

Besides, who is to say that the Evil Boss hasn’t been fired since then?

He’s still there, although a reorg means the department that he ran, and I was laid off from, no longer exists. He would get it (in both senses), because I would e-mail it to him directly. He’s very vain, and is the type to interpret something as benign as ‘Good Morning’ as a personal insult, and would interpret this correctly as a personal ‘Fuck you’, which is the intent. Pitting him on the anniversary of Black Monday is good enough, however.

Good news? Shirley, I’ve been working for 6 months now, and I brag about it every chance I get. :stuck_out_tongue:

I say send it to other bosses. Like mine. Or Cecil. Sure would throw 'em for a loop, and you’d gain even more satisfaction from putting it in the mailbox.

And you should include a picture of you blowing up something cool.

I did mean to say congrats on finding the job of your dreams, honestly.

I sent a similar missive to the only person to ever fire me. Mine started…

‘One year ago this week, you fired me; and there is no possible way I can ever thank you enough.’

I went on to describe the wonderful things that happened to me when I was forced to find desireable work elsewhere; promotions, raises, bonuses.

I was fired so he could be demoted into my position, and I knew he was getting none of these things.

He got it, and shared it with a friend I still had on the inside. My friends exact words were ‘I know it got to him’.

Gosh, aren’t you giving him way more credit than you’d like to, with talk of bile and trauma and not being able to recover? I, for one, got two very different messages there. Are you happy to have been ‘let go’ or not? I know, it hurts to be let go no matter how it’s done, but . . .

The reference to ‘not fully recovered’ is my financial situation. I have a house for sale in Indianapolis, and it’s been on the market since mid-December. The market there is slow, and the house was not in primo showing condition. I still have to pay primary and 2nd mortgage, PLUS rent here in Virginny that costs more than the mortgages combined. I’m pulling in a salary that exceeds what I had before I was laid off, but I’m skating close to personal bankruptcy.

I’m still pissed about that. Yet, if the house sells soon, I’ll be fine financially. There was also the first month, where I was so depressed that I’m surprised I could get out of bed each day. What broke that was my first real job interview.

I agree on the double message thing – either you were crushed beyond any other crisis in your life (worse than losing your parents? really???) or it was the impetus you needed to get to a better place. Pick one.

The other thing is…okay, there may be exceptions, but very few people get fired because a boss wakes up some morning and needs someone to kick. Hiring people is time consuming and expensive. Training people is expensive. Waiting while they learn the company quirks and fixing their beginning mistakes is expensive and annoying and not so fun. Most managers will go quite a long way to avoid having to replace a worker unless it’s absolutely unavoidable.

People generally get fired because

a)They deserve to be.

They can’t do the job. They’re obnoxious and driving coworkers mad. They’re showing up drunk. They’re blatantly doing non-work during work hours to an unbearable extent. They’re stealing. They have horrendous B.O. Whatever.

And despite whatever constellation of undesirable traits a particular Bad Worker has, the thought of going through the hassles of finding a replacement for him will generally keep the Bad Worker on the job much, much longer than he should be, while the Boss tries to shape him up and gives him warnings and third chances and what all – probably driving the rest of the staff nuts, as they suffer the consequences of picking up after Bad Worker’s incompetence.
b) Their job is going away.

There’s now only enough work for six workers at your level, and you’re the seventh most skilled employee in the bunch. The product is being dropped. A merger is leaving duplicates in positions. The company is only willing to pay for X customer service agents from now on. Whatever.

Maybe your old boss did hate your guts, and he chose to bump you rather than Jones for that reason. But I still bet he was in a position where he felt forced to fire someone. You, for whatever Bad Worker reasons, or You as the chosen goat for company reasons.

Getting an over-the-top message a year later that says “You destroyed my life” might only confirm him that he was right to get such a loser off the payroll. And prompt him to have your ID photo posted at the guard desk at all entrances.

Getting an message a year later that says “I’m doing fabulous, thanks” might actually make him feel good. (Whew! I was worried about Perkins, but I had to cut him lose, and it looks like he landed on his feet.)

But mainly its going to make him think worse of you: A year later and this loser is still obsessing over getting fired? What a putz.

Because whether you got the axe for something you did/were OR because the company needed to stop paying your salary, it was a heck of a lot less personal to your boss than it was to you. He probably hasn’t thought about you once after you were out the door. He hasn’t been lying awake at night grinding his teeth and cursing your ancestors.

You got fired. It happens to most of us sooner or later. Learn from the experience if the firing was your fault, spend a little time cursing fate if it was a company reason that did you in. Then accept it, close the book, and get on with your life.

You say you have a fabulous new job – concentrate on that and let go of this bitterness towards the past.

SBS, when it happened, it was the worst thing that ever happened to me, and that is supposed to be one of the points. The second point is that I’m still having to deal with problems caused by it.

My ultimate point is that other than a pause to thumb my nose at him, I’ve mostly landed on my feet (see point 2 above), and I’m NOT looking back.

And, if you look harder at what I’ve posted, I’ve said this is a Pitting, and not a real live letter/e-mail.

I say send the letter, keep him up on current events.

*8000th post :slight_smile:

Do not send this letter. It makes you sounds like a weird scary pathetic psycho. You’re marking the anniversary of being laid off and now you want to send some sort of “you’ve wounded my soul but I’m strong in the broken place” letter to your ex-boss. You describe this event as “the most traumatic in your life” that “surpassed even the death of your parents”. You’re still “not fully recovered.”

What the fuck?

Get a fucking grip. Thousands of people get laid off every day. You bitch to your friends and then go find another job. You do not make the event the central point of some deep personal tragedy. I can’t even wrap my head around how losing some job could be the worst thing that ever happened to you and more traumatic than the deaths of your parents. Where are your priorities? The entire letter sounds like something a stalker would send to an ex-girlfriend. Get over yourself and your job loss “trauma”.

Woh, dude. People react to diffrent things in diffrent ways. Getting fired from a job is personally VERY upestting.

Let him have his moment. He already said he isn’t going to send it. He’s happy now and wants to reflect. Let him have it.

Bob congrats on finding the Dream Job.

Geez, guys. Can’t a guy bitch and gloat a bit without being referred for therapy?

I know vunderbob and his family. He is neither pathetic nor scary.

Bob can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe he was the main wage earner in his family. With a house, mortgage, kid in school, payments, the usual money-sucking things we all have to deal with, how would you expect a career-level (we aren’t talking McDonald’s here, where he could just hop down the street and pick a new burger joint) job loss to affect him?

So he did what he had to–interviewed, found a job several states away, uprooted himself and his family, put the house on the market, and moved. It’s all to the better, obviously–but if you think that sort of situation isn’t shitty to go through, you’re outta touch. I’m not at all surprised that it was the most traumatic event he’s gone through. A death in the family is tragic, traumatic, heartbreaking, absolutely–but it won’t leave you sleeping in the station wagon, either.

Bob, I’m so glad things worked out well for you. I knew they would. How does the rest of the family like the new environment?

And I relate all to well to the housing market issue–I’m going to end up bankrupt before I can sell my house, I’m pretty sure…

It’s not the boss’s money, he won’t care, especially if he’s the asshole boss type so often described here.

Okay, my response was assholish and out of line. I apologize.

I still contend that getting laid off is not something to be brooding about a year after the fact. I’m glad the situation has improved, but sending a nasty letter to an ex-boss can only turn out badly.

Thanks for the support, Torie and Bodypoet. I don’t often start Pit threads because of the potshots.

As far as adjusting, I pretty much have the hang of the area now. I like it, except that the Peninsula is crowded and the traffic is horrible. Kind of reminds of Orange County CA in that respect. The people here are nice; they remind me of Midwesterners with twangs.

VunderWife won’t be happy until I’ve sold my soul for a new mortgage, and that won’t happen until I’ve gotten rid of the old one. The area is catching on with the kid, but since I left him with my in-laws until we’re permanently settled, he’s not a reglar yet. He’ll be here for a couple of weeks this summer, and that will be cool.

Since this is The Pit, Ratty - go fuck yourself. It’s been several years since I last used my axe, and I’m feeling much better now.

Sorry about that last. I sniped back before you posted this.

I have not laid anyone off in the 12 years of business that I’ve been owner, but I have fired about 12 people over that course, but I have still wished them the best of luck (sincerely) in finding the nitch where they truly belong. The ones I’ve fired did the big no-no’s like, Insubordination, Stealing and Falsifying Documents. I could have easily ripped each of them new assholes, but these guys still need to eat, live under a roof and take care of a family. So I wish them well, and tell them to make their next employer proud of them by not making the same mistakes they’ve made here. Some actually thank me for the method of termination, but no matter how sorry they are for the deed, I tell them that working for me after the fact would never be the same knowing what they did and what they are capable of doing. They need a clean slate with another employer.

After saying that, I would feel just plain awful to lay-off anybody in our company. Although your boss maybe an asshole, offer to buy him a beer afterwork just once to thank him for getting you where you are today. He may have some insightful questions for you and start treating you as an equal with respect. You could just send the letter as is with back-handed intent, or you could show him how you mastered your life over the course of a year and how you improved your job, your outlook on life, etc…to the point of making him envious of you or making him realize that he underestimated you in your character and achievements.

Cut the snarky stuff out, and add the beer offer part to the letter…everyone has way too many enemies already and cannot afford to add another.