(06-08-2016 06:14 PM)General Stalin Wrote: So what's the point of telling us all of your office drama?
TL;DR - Everyone is replaceable and being a "company man" in a corporate ant farm means nothing?
Have a backup plan. Know that no matter how useful you think you are to company X, they can always find someone else to do it. Your previous supervisor may have made a hell of an impression on you, but no one is immune to the axe. Even CEO's can get fired by owners and board members. If you want to have a solid "retire by 40" plan then join the military.
Part of the point that I was looking to make, is that, today, even when things seem like they are going 'ok', corporations have no problem acting irrational and just getting rid of someone, when they should just 'forgive and forget', instead of trying to 'get back' at people and even seem glad to 'stuff it' to someone. I do not think this kind of stuff went on for the most part 20 or 30 years ago or at least not as bad as it is now. This kind of vicious behavior seems, to me, to be something new and to a new level. And it is coming from people that are getting paid in the range of mid to high 6 digit salaries, when I would normally expect them to tell the employee to just get back to work. If I was getting $500K or more per year, my employees could yell at me for all I would care. Instead, it is like people at that level are 'sensitive' and get rid of people for the slightest reason, then they wonder why no one wants to work for them.
Part of the problem today is that demand in the economy is not what it use to be, partly because of all the QE programs and other things that keep inflating asset prices and have reduced demand for labor; so anyone who loses their job is in trouble with replacing the lost income. (Of course, having all kinds of fixed expenses, like a large house and fancy car, makes it worse.)
I know of some stories in a plant nearby that closed with people making into the low 6 digits figures in semiconductor manufacturing. Some of the people stayed to the end of the closing because of the large severance packages, like 6 to 12 months in some cases; plus they could collect unemployment for another 6 months of something like $800 per week. While that is not a lot of money. by my standards, it is certainly enough to be out of work all year, as long as you do not have all kinds of expenses. (You can't go outside of the United States on vacation anymore because most states have a tie in with boarder control so they know when you are out of the country and not eligible for unemployment. In the 1980s it was great, you could be on vacation for a month or two overseas and still be collecting and no one cared.) The people who stayed to the end thought and expected they would be able to find another job within a matter of months. One of my friends almost took that risk but I advised him against it since there was no way to be sure, and since prior I already knew people who had trouble getting anything other than contract work from time to time when they got laid off. I am now hearing stories of a few people from that plant who, after 18 to 24 months have run through everything, plus retirement savings trying to maintain their lifestyle with no prospect of another job still.
If this was the late 1990s, or early 1980s, getting fired from a job would be no problem, you could just find somewhere else to work in a few weeks, or a few months if you wanted to take some time off. I had this happen to me a few times. The first time it happened, where I got sick of the company I was working for and told them off, I went on vacation for two weeks, was out for another eight weeks and then went back to work. I could have started work earlier but I wanted to go to a friend's graduation and then drive down to Key West, so I delayed starting a new job by a week weeks. ( As a side example to show much better demand was in the late 1980s, the new job I started called my parents house on a SUNDAY looking around [I had no answering machines or cell phone, it was 1989] for me and asking if I could start work the next day. I told them I had to wait another week since I already had things scheduled for other people that they needed me to do. When was the last time any company called around on a weekend looking for a candidate for a job to hire them the next day?)
One funny thing about that period of unemployment, is that at the end of the year, I thought and felt like I had been out of work for months. Part of the reason I started looking for another job again was that I was getting bored without having to go to work during the week. At the end of the year, when I got the 1099 for my unemployment benefits, I realized that I only collected for 8 weeks, plus another two weeks that I was on vacation, for a total of ten weeks but to me it had seemed like months.
Today, many places will not hire someone unless they are already working somewhere, plus, from what I can see, many companies are acting more irrational than in the past. Even when someone within the organization is telling them 'don't do this', they still go ahead, do 'this', and top it off with acting like everything is just fine. It did not use to be like that. It is almost like companies are slowly going insane, and no amount of reason or logic will change what they are doing.
I think one of the things that shocked me at what happened is that this is the first time a company went ahead was 'got rid' of someone because I was there. I have been at companies in the past where some people were causing so many problems that I was praying that the problem person would leave or the company would do something, only to end up leaving when I couldn't stand it anymore or provoking a 'showdown' with the other person and getting fired; but I could never get the company to realize that the person was causing all kinds of problems.
Here, I feel like a betrayed a trusted mentor in an act of treachery that I was, like an idiot, not even aware was being planned. Usually, I am the guy getting fired/laid off/whacked; not the person helping to carry out the plan just by being available to do the work.
I think another thing I wish I had done was that I should have taken more time off earlier this year. I was planning on taking at least a few days off every month this summer; since what good is money if I never do anything, and now all of that is off.
I remember when I started my working career that I thought I would always want to be working, since there use to be a lot of prestige to being productive and useful doing productive work. Now it is like you have to avoid being engulfed in some kind of office melodrama and somehow still get the work done in spite of the company getting in your way of one doing productive work.
Smaller companies use to avoid some of the problems of larger companies, but today it seems like even a lot of small companies have someone that, instead of being grateful to be working for themselves and not stuck with the problems of a large organization, instead is nuts themselves and gleefully takes it out on their hapless employees. (The beatings will continue until moral improves.) One of my favorite stories I hear about from time to time is of an insurance agency that makes money but the owner then loses it all on trying to diversify into other businesses and then has to borrow from a line of credit to make payroll most weeks. The owner has been doing this for years, so it is well beyond the point where the guy should realize that 'the insurance agency is what makes him money' and anything else he should just save in a mutual fund.
Another trend I have started to notice, is that people that I thought I would be working with or for, are all taking early retirement as soon as they can (social security 62.5; government work 30 years work plus age 55 or older in most cases) instead of waiting for full retirement at age 65. One customer site had one of the people retire with no warning to anyone. I do not think they even had a chance to do a retirement party for the person, which is the first time I have ever heard of something like that happening. It is almost like the person just 'sneaked out in the middle of the night'. Here in the United States the old 'protocol' usually would be to have some kind of celebration or small party on the person's last day of work. (In England, a lot of times, the old protocol was that the person usually did a regular day of work and goes home afterwards to maybe a small celebration later since 'they wouldn't want to make a fuss over it'.)
Of course, no one holds to the old protocols or old ways anymore; and usually have no idea what I am talking about when I bring one of them up.
One of the 'failures' was the time I tried to invoke one of the old protocols, in that one of my customer's was going to lay off a employee the week of Christmas because he was not 'working out' in a new position. I tried to suggest putting the employee back in his old position but for some reason they would not hear such talk. If the employee didn't last 90 days from placement by the agency, then the company got a refund on the placement fee, as long as the placement fee invoice was paid within 30 days of placement. The company wanted to lay him off before Christmas because the 90 days was almost over. I implored the customer to wait until after New Years to lay the employee off and adhere to the protocol for such matters, since the old protocol was, that unless the company was in dire financial trouble, that one did not fire or lay off anyone during the holiday season (Thanksgiving to New Years Day). Of course, the customer would hear none of such talk and laid the employee off anyways. The funny part is that the customer did not pay the placement agency within the 30 days, plus the HR department made it clear they would never use that company again for new employees to said agency, so the company didn't get a refund. But at least the company was not surprised when that happen because I said, "Look, you didn't meet the terms of getting a refund plus you already made it clear to the agency that you will never use them for business again. What possible, logical, reason would the agency have for refunding the money?" The answer of course was none, but they tried anyways.
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