Article shared on Quora by Anonymous
I worked for a company for 24 years, put in countless extra hours, interrupted vacations and weekends to deal with issues, and never let them down once. In late 2015 the company changed hands, and a lot of senior staff was packaged out. I was in the back of my mind expecting it, but seemed to get by unscathed, I thought perhaps because I was the only one in my position who knew my job inside and out.
Then one day in early 2016 the boss said he needed to talk to me about some issues with a vendor. I went down to his office and he said we should go get a coffee. As soon as we got out of the dept he looked sheepish and said we actually had to go to HR. Even though I was not really that surprised a momentary shock came over me. We went to HR and he was mumbling about how he was being forced to cut positions etc. but I wasn’t really hearing anything. They gave me quite a generous package & I was very curt, said where’s the papers, signed them and they had security come and escort me out after I cleaned out my locker and desk. It was a very humiliating experience.
I drove home, wondering what to do next. That evening I got a couple of phone calls from coworkers explaining their displeasure, and how there was dead weight in the dept he easily could have gotten rid of etc. I told them not to worry about it and about a week later one of them organized a dinner for me where they all chipped in and got me a very nice gift.
I took some time off for the first time in decades, gathered my thoughts then started looking for work. At 58 it’s not easy finding work and there’s a lot of “ageism” out there, even if it is illegal or they say they don’t do it. Eventually I got offered a 1 year contract away from home, because of the nature of my work there was little to nothing locally. I took the contract and had to rent an apartment and live away from home. The company I was with liked my work and wanted to extend it, but did not have the budget money to do so.
Exactly a year after my dismissal I was getting messaged from someone at the former company along the lines of “how did you do this, what did you do here..” etc. I was politely dismissive then a few days later they offered a monthly retainer plus hourly rate if they needed me if I’f help them out. Somewhat reluctantly I agreed, as I could use the extra money.
After about 8 months they brought me in to work on a project, when checking their archives in preparation I saw that they had left themselves very vulnerable on several fronts and let them know about it.
Long story short, I’m not looking after most of what I used to look after for them, working from home, less hours, less days per week, for just slightly less than what I was making when they let me go - sans benefits however.
Ref. https://www.quora.com/How-does-it-feel-to-get-fired-from-your-job-suddenly