Just wanted to inform the Teeming Several that I have been laid off from my dot.com employer as of Wednesday afternoon. It appears I’m a victim of the invisible resession we’re in.
Random FYI, I got a month’s severance, and even against company policy the partner I work most closely with promised me a glowing reference. I didn’t see it coming at all, and they announced a 30% cut of all finances as the reason for it. They cut 60% of the technology department, a bad sign for a tech company.
Minor bitches, I imagine the boss knew this was coming prior to last weekend, yet he still set an impossible deadline which had me working 12hr days for a week, including a 20hr Friday, a 10 hr Saturday, and skipping lunch everyday. Combine this with the 20" of snow that we got between Monday and Wednesday which I was forced to commute in, unlike 75% of the city. I guess he needed to get his last pound of flesh. The final annoyance was that he kept me in the office til 5PM before dropping the axe, it was snowing all day and he knew it, yet he kept me there until the roads were good and bad, it took me 3.5 hrs to get home.
Besides the lack of curteousy recently, I liked the job and it was ecxceptionally laid back, perfect for my personality. Gonna miss it, and I really never had a bad day of work there.
I’ll probably try and stay in the small company, dot.com industry. I like the atmosphere, and I want to try and ride out the struggling landscape.
MrCynical, so what booze do you recommend for these occasions?
I’d like to point out, that even though you were salary, you may be entitled to overtime. If you were not a supervisor, then after 40 hours you are still entitled to overtime after 40 hours a week. This is a federal law. If you’re interested, check with OSHA. I got screwed the same way, but after figuring how much I would get in back pay and settlement, it wasn’t worth it to me to persue.
and yeah… now’s the chance to move away from Shitcago
Omni what a terrible thing to happen. Gosh sounds like you didn’t even get vaseline. Good luck on finding another job, but actually from reading some of your posts here you shouldn’t have any problem since you are obviously very bright.
Criminy, what’s with all the pre-Christmas layoffs? Hubby’s copany let 50 go last week… they couldn’t wait till January???
Good luck to ya, Omni! I’m sure you’ll come out of this just peachy!!
Well, it was explained that in the last several months there was some type of court decision in which an employer was sued based on information given about an employee. Even though the employee had given explicit written consent to the employer to give him a reference, the employee sucessfully sued the company over the information given. I don’t know the details of the case, but the short of it is that my companies legal department advised them to not give out any references, good or bad, under any circumstances. The only information that will be given is time worked, salary, and job description.
So, hopefully the partner comes through on his promise regardless.
Good luck.