Got laid off four times when I was a temp worker for all of them. First time was when a major customer had a downturn in the oil market and I was the obvious choice by being one of the latest hires. I was brought in for a 15 minute meeting in the only conference room of the office and perp walked out by my asshole manager that same hour.
The other three were due to the contracts timing out (CA law forces companies to either convert contract workers to FTE after 2 years or lay them off). It’s a lot less shocking when you know the date but it still sucks to count down the time. It didn’t hurt to leave so much considering temp workers were treated as second class citizens like being excluded from company parties or not receiving bonuses so it was hard to get attached.
It’s been close to a decade and I’m still traumatized by it. Fuckers almost cost me my marriage, my family, my home… Have never hated a company more. I can’t wait for the revolution.
Which time?
First time happened after I’d been with my first real job for ten years because the business was changing and there wasn’t a role for me. I was out of work for 7 shitty months trying to have my own business starting from the few customers we had left when they let me go. It was right after I bought a house and had a baby. It was fucking awful.
Second time was after COVID. First we all took a 10% pay cut to avoid layoffs. Then two months later when federal assistance expired, they cut 1/3 of the company across the board. I’m a little fucking bitter about that to be honest, but I had a new remote job lined up within a couple of weeks that paid quite a bit better.
Last time was 5 months ago. Just got hired this week. Start next month. It sucked. Wiped out my whole retirement savings, so I get to start over at 51. But we made it through and potentially I won’t have to switch companies again.
Weird angel investor took us all out to a fancy dinner and made a weird extensive speech about the importance of the future; kind of “Godspeed my young protégés I know you’ll do wonderful things.” Kind of sounded like he finally believed in us and wanted to let us know with a nice gesture. Idk. No one could make any sense of it.
The next day his lackey informed us we were all fired. Oooh, that’s what that was about; makes sense, oh well, we have to get real jobs now apparently.
Lol what the hell, your old boss is fucked in the head
He was a weird motherfucker in several different ways
He had money though. That’s the great thing about money; you can just kind of motor around with whatever priorities you want and for the most part no one intervenes or tells you to stop
For me it was fine, maybe about 15 years ago. Small startup company I was at ran out of funding, we got something like 1-2 months severance. We all got along fine so it wasn’t like everyone hated the job or the owners, sometimes startup companies just don’t make it through those first few years.
Summer is probably the best time to be unemployed, spent a lot of time exploring my neighborhood during the weekday afternoons and was practicing making cold brew & other summer drinks LOL.
Was doing freelance work while being on unemployment / looking for a new steady job. Think it was about 4-5 months before I landed a new job (did get 1-2 job offers during that time but was maybe being a bit picky & turned them down).
… Also helps that I keep savings so short term unemployment won’t wreck me. I’ve seen posts about people being out of work for years, that would be a far worse scenario.
I can imagine in a small startup with good interpersonal relationships it hurts less. I was never laid off but I worked in a small company like that and there were risky periods. It might have been an exception among most companies but we all had access to the revenue and expense data. There can be no surprises if everyone knows the financials.
I was laid off in January, I had worked as an IT technician for the company in 8 years, I got a great severance package and in March I started on my current job, even had time for a vacation between jobs and got to see the south of spain.
My partner was the only one holding her company together as operations manager. She got put on a HUGE project and promised two weeks vacation after, then laid off right before the vacation. Now the company is trying to make her sign a contract that forces her to give up her severance in exchange for four weeks of labor.
On the bright side, the professional relationships she built outside the company are paying off, and she has a dozen or so job leads
My employer sued IBM in early 2k for breach of contract but lost all their money, rep, staff, dreams, hopes and future in the ensuing legal/PR fight.
I was laid-off after dodging so many proverbial bullets. I got a call on a Thursday from my boss, and he checked the HR was on the line and didn’t say another word until the official stuff was done. Then he made sure I was okay, asked if I had any options, and rang off.
I didn’t cry, beg, rage, or question: I felt relieved that I could stop working 16 hours a day, guilt over being let-go, and a general feeling of worthlessness. And then I was out.
The element of surprise.
I was laid off in late July of 2023. I dodged a massive layoff in November of 2022 so I knew it was a possibility.
It fucking sucked. I miss that company. I miss it all. It made me feel worthless. I kept comparing myself to the others that didn’t get laid off as if there was any sense made in the decision.
I get work through my skilled trades union. We’re constantly getting hired onto jobs and laid off when the work is complete. Jobs can last 1 shift, up to a few months, or even years. Getting laid off is a time for celebration after being on the job for a while.
My last job laid off over half of their staff. They hired a bunch during COVID after getting relief grants and then laid off whole departments once ChatGPT started to get popular. First it was marketing and communications. Had a work buddy who had some health problems there but he passed away a week after being laid off from a heart attack.
Then it was HR, to be replaced by ChatGPT as a bot. It started giving incorrect information so they hired 2 teams of consultants to work on that.
Then when that wasn’t working a third crew of consultants were hired but we never got a straight answer to what they were working on. Turns out they were working on a report to senior management of additional efficiencies the company could make? And guess what they concluded? More cuts!
So the company cut the IT department 15% and they figured it would be fair if they did it at random. I was one of the “lucky” 15%. I was asked to help train one of the consultants on one of our internal programs so I walk into the meeting room but it’s my manager and two security guards and she says “Your employment with company is complete, your position has been eliminated. Vacate your desk and hand over your laptop and badge”.
Very cold, no emotion. This was a woman who would joke with me on Teams and shoot the shit all day. Both security guards walked on either side of me out the door with my backpack. Felt like I was being arrested.
Found a job two months later. Blew through my entire savings and lost a friend of mine (yes heart attack but I still hold firm that the layoffs triggered it - he has money problems at home with kids. They didn’t deserve this). No severance pay but I was able to collect a little bit of employment insurance so I could still afford food to eat.
got given 4 grand + got to loot the hotels freezer for as much food as I could carry between me and my partner.
I remember taking about 50 sirloin steaks, 30 ribeyes, 5 pounds of mince, 20 rumps and 20 lamb shanks all in bin bags + my backpack.
I gave out as much as I could to my friends and froze the rest, I was handing out frozen steaks to my friends everytime I saw them for months lol.
I got a public sector job within a week that let me work from home.
Overall 10/10 nice opportuntiy to loot corporate.
This was a covid hospitality lay off.
I was breaking up in Whistler back in my twenties, at the end of the season, they lay everybody off except for a small crew of full-time employees. I went on to EI for the summer pretended to look for jobs, and went on road trips with friends. Once summer finished, I found another job and I have unfortunately been employed ever since in various Warehouse jobs from order picker to warehouse manager.
What is breaking, and what is El?
It was meant to be “working up in Whistler” but I didn’t check my voice typing.
EI is what you get when you get laid off in BC. I don’t know if they still call it that anymore.
I thought those were skiing or biking or local terms I just didn’t know since I’ve never being skiing or to Whistler, haha. I read EL rather than ei like thinking it was referring to a place everyone from that area would know that started with those letters. This makes much more sense now.
There were a bunch of closed door meetings with upper management and the busy season was set to end in a few weeks, so the writing was on the wall.
I had some of the most consistently highest metrics so I went into our VP of Operations office and straight up asked if I would be let go on X date. He told me no.
To be fair, he kept his word. About 70% of the staff were let go on that date. I was let go 2 days after that.
