Ways I’ve lost my job

[fbhjr]

The certainty of layoffs where I work, with the uncertainty of who will be laid off has me thinking about the other jobs I’ve lost over the years.

The first time was the worst. I was working at the iron foundry. (http://www.fbhjr.livejournal.com/73853.html )It was a job I hated and was looking for a new place and not having any luck.
The way I was told I was fired was my paycheck was not with the other people’s I was handing out that Friday. I went and asked my boss where it was, and he handed it to me and told me it was my last. No severance, no pay for accrued vacation time. Here is your check, get out.
I was 24 and had never lost a job before. As much as I hated that job, I liked having income and hadn’t put much aside due to low pay and debts from college. But my (now) wife helped a lot and I was getting some unemployment, so it wasn’t bankrupt bad.
It took me three months to find a new job after that.

The second was better than that. It was the music synthesizer company. (http://www.fbhjr.livejournal.com/74102.html )
My boss had told me in my review that year “as long as I’m here, you will have a job.”
We were both laid off a month later.
The method of learning it was a bit strange. They gave the woman who ran personnel the list of people being laid off on the next day so she could arrange their last checks. Her name was on the list.
So, she went around telling people if they were being laid off saying “what are they going to do about it? Fire me?”
The VP who had been put in charge of us a short time before had clearly been sent there to make cuts. He didn’t have a clue what we were actually doing and didn’t show any sign of wanting to know.
He gave me a talk on my last day about “how sad it was” and how he’s “hire me back if there was any way when things got better”. It was all I could do not to laugh in his face.
They did pay me accrued vacation time and gave me a form letter of recommendation from the president of the company saying being let go was not my fault.
I moved back to Massachusetts and again in with my (now) wife. In the 5 months I was out of work I applied to more than 800 companies. Unemployment tried to cut off my benefits as they didn’t think I was working hard enough at finding a new job. I brought them 100 rejection letters and they changed their minds.

The last one was the furniture place and within the 6 years I’ve been doing LJ. (http://www.fbhjr.livejournal.com/77276.html ) Of all of the places they gave me the best deal. (http://www.fbhjr.livejournal.com/183561.html) A month’s severance pay, plus accrued vacation time, plus health care for that month of severance.

Comments

[manintheboat.livejournal.com]

I've quit a bunch of jobs. "Let go" from... three?

Last one was a smallish insane GP medical office that didn't believe in hand washing. Have you ever sat next to someone who smelled so bad you almost vomited? Then that person yelled at you?
That was that job. I would have quit the first day but John kept telling me to stick it out. They fired me because I was in the bathroom all the time vomiting from whatever I caught from people not washing their hands and the smell.

[endlessblush.livejournal.com]

Every job I've ever had I've been retrenched from except my last one, I left because I was pregnant. I'm not very lucky with jobs I'm afraid.