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FngKestrel · 12-23-2004, 12:45 AM

Ah, firing stories...I've got two stories, one from each side of the fence.

First story:
My first job in my chosen career path ended when the company had a round of firings. Prior to that, I had survived an across the board pay cut for all employees, and two previous rounds of firings. When the second round came around, it made the news. I was at work on a Saturday because of shifted work week and I got a phone call from a friend.

"Uh, what are you doing?"
"Working. Why?"
"Whew, because I just opened the newspaper and I saw an article that your company announced massive layoffs."
"Uh, I'm okay, thanks."

Anyhow, I'm at home a few months later, and I get an answering machine message. "Hey, uh, can you call us before you come into work tomorrow?"
My mom was at the kitchen counter and asks, "Is that a good thing?" I could only shoot her a look like, "Are you kidding?"

So yeah, I got fired on my day off. Oh well, probably the best thing that could have happened since that company folded shortly after and is pretty much the acknowledged blight of the industry I'm in.

After leaving that company, I was picked up by one of their competitors at the beginning of the year. They had a massive hiring binge a few months after I was hired, and as such, there were a lot of people in our department. So many, in fact, that they had a mass firing near the end of the year. The way it worked at that company was that there were permanent full-time employees and temporary full-time employees. Most of the people, including myself, were hired as temporary full-time employees, and becoming a permanent employee was the Holy Grail of employment there. The ideal situation was that a person would be a temp for 6 months, then converted to perm, earning some sort of job security and a new colored of badge (star bellied sneetches). I stayed there for close to a year and when I asked about becoming a perm, I got the canned answer, "I can't promise you anything, just hang in there." I signed some form extending my temp status so that they could keep me on. Otherwise I would have been let go.

Anyhow, near the end of the year, our project had the most people in the department and they needed to be laid off/fired. The supervisor didn't know anyone and didn't want to go hunt for people so he sat in one of the boardrooms and asked me to bring him the people. After that ordeal, many people came up to me asking, "Dude, your badge is the same color as ours, why are you doing this?" "So other people don't have to." If I didn't do it, they would have just asked someone else to bring the lambs to the slaughter.

12-23-2004, 12:45 AM	#43 (permalink)
FngKestrel Junkie	Ah, firing stories...I've got two stories, one from each side of the fence. First story: My first job in my chosen career path ended when the company had a round of firings. Prior to that, I had survived an across the board pay cut for all employees, and two previous rounds of firings. When the second round came around, it made the news. I was at work on a Saturday because of shifted work week and I got a phone call from a friend. "Uh, what are you doing?" "Working. Why?" "Whew, because I just opened the newspaper and I saw an article that your company announced massive layoffs." "Uh, I'm okay, thanks." Anyhow, I'm at home a few months later, and I get an answering machine message. "Hey, uh, can you call us before you come into work tomorrow?" My mom was at the kitchen counter and asks, "Is that a good thing?" I could only shoot her a look like, "Are you kidding?" So yeah, I got fired on my day off. Oh well, probably the best thing that could have happened since that company folded shortly after and is pretty much the acknowledged blight of the industry I'm in. After leaving that company, I was picked up by one of their competitors at the beginning of the year. They had a massive hiring binge a few months after I was hired, and as such, there were a lot of people in our department. So many, in fact, that they had a mass firing near the end of the year. The way it worked at that company was that there were permanent full-time employees and temporary full-time employees. Most of the people, including myself, were hired as temporary full-time employees, and becoming a permanent employee was the Holy Grail of employment there. The ideal situation was that a person would be a temp for 6 months, then converted to perm, earning some sort of job security and a new colored of badge (star bellied sneetches). I stayed there for close to a year and when I asked about becoming a perm, I got the canned answer, "I can't promise you anything, just hang in there." I signed some form extending my temp status so that they could keep me on. Otherwise I would have been let go. Anyhow, near the end of the year, our project had the most people in the department and they needed to be laid off/fired. The supervisor didn't know anyone and didn't want to go hunt for people so he sat in one of the boardrooms and asked me to bring him the people. After that ordeal, many people came up to me asking, "Dude, your badge is the same color as ours, why are you doing this?" "So other people don't have to." If I didn't do it, they would have just asked someone else to bring the lambs to the slaughter.