Was in the middle of cleaning filing cabinets at home and saw an old termination letter from one of my first jobs. Though it was several years ago, I can still remember it like yesterday. A new boss came in, who was an incredibly terrible person, and only focused on cost cutting. She had no clue how to run the place, not sure how she got hired. She gave me a large assignment before I got let go. The assignment was to explain to her how all the processes and the department function. A week later she emailed me, no joke, she emailed me, telling I was let go. Not even a thank you at the end. I look back on it as a funny experience now.
Have you been fired or let go? If so what was the situation like. How did you cope?
Yep, was working at a smoothie shop, got caught fucking a coworker in the freezer. I don't recommend it, it was absolutely freezing cold -- horribly cold.
smooth move, was she worth it?
If you're going to get fired, can you think of a better reason?
The cold was brutal but made for a great story at the time.
Not sure if thats an intentional play on words given the position, but SB'ed.
Laid off twice as an engineer, the first time losing my undergrad degree sponsorship along with it. It hurt but now I'm not scared of losing my job at all anymore.
One thing I never truly appreciated until I had international friends that were let laid off from their jobs is how unbelievably stressful it must be to lose your job period, then add in the element of an exploding Visa if you don't find a new job in X # of days... and that you have to find a new employer willing to hire you with your added Visa costs. Definitely don't envy anyone in that position.
Wow, wasn't gonna post, but that's exactly me a couple of months ago.
Was let go from a startup (personnel reduction). I saw the financials, so saw it coming, but when it happened it became too real. First 2 days were a drunk-fest with some of the other folks who were let go, but after that reality hit.
I don't think anybody I know could really empathize with how shitty the situation was given I was in a Visa and had a month to find another job.
With really not many alternatives, I hustled, picked up the phone and started calling people. Got lucky and now in a better position than I would've been had I stayed. Could've gone radically different, though.
One thing that helped to balance my stress level, and I cannot recommend this enough, was having a comfortable amount of cash in the bank. Last thing you want to worry about is money when you are looking for a job (e.g. I was taking taxis everywhere to meet with people on short notice).
Life experience that will certainly shape what type of leader I become in the future.
I was fired from Outback Steakhouse as a busboy because I did absolutely every last bit of my job duties and looked for a manager to leave. After about a half hour of no one knowing where the manager was, I went home. I had school the next morning. I was almost home when they called me looking for me because of course, they couldn't find me now. They were looking for me because of something I didn't do... something that was a server's job to do... They fired me because my work ethic didn't align with them.
Basically it was just new management came in and they all hated me from day 1. Old management loved me.
I worked at a water removal company (think Servpro); my job was to drive the truck around and find plumbers at gas stations, convince them to use our service when working on a home leak. It was so bad. Nothing against blue collar work but here I was with a UT Austin degree trying to relate to plumbers that chain smoked and hung out at Cheddars restaurant. It was in '10 and I just needed any job right after college. Every morning I was sick to my stomach on the way to work-- it was all the negatives of sales with no upside and no commission. They put me on a really shitty salary to prevent 1.5 overtime pay.
After a couple months it was obvious I wasn't shoring up business and let go. The guys at the company were good with the technicals, but they were all uneducated morons. They couldn't even write emails-- they literally looked like a 3rd grader who couldn't read typed them. I should have had the balls to quit I just played the safe life game post college when I had no money.
What degree did you graduate UT Austin with? I am asking because I'm wondering why you didn't wind up energy banking in Houston. I am currently loping at the possibility of going to UT Austin's BHP program, but I may have the option to go Ivey. Don't know what I'll choose but I'm interested in hearing about your experiences at UT.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand this forum is all HS kids again....
Yeah, that's weird. It's amazing that all 10,000 UT grads every year don't end up in energy banking in Houston. Energy is a growing area, so you would expect that it could absorb 20,000 UT grads in banking every year, if not many, many more.
I did bachelor's gov & history at UT, work for myself in Dallas managing commercial real estate & securities-- I inherited to be honest, no finance background. Lot's of friends wound up in Houston with oil, Dallas with banking, Austin with techie type stuff. All 3 cities are blowing up economically.
Brother in law went to UT McComb's for MBA and got a great job in Austin commercial real estate. If you can do in state tuition UT I'd do it-- if you have a college trust or whatever and get into and ivy do that. Just weigh your options and be smart, don't take on a shit ton of debt etc. unless it's a really good school.
Sorry for the partial threadjack guys-- always willing to share info though.
Got fired from my first job out of undergrad. Long story short, there was a personality conflict with someone who put me on probation. She went on maternity leave and her boss took me off probation because I was performing fine. Maternity leave ended and I was put back on "elevated probation." Ask the manager what had changed and I got a "she's been here for a few years so I trust her judgement."
Anyway, a few weeks later I buy some buns for the team picnic on Sunday. Monday afternoon I get let go and am handed 5 $1 bills to ensure I am "made whole" on my last business expense.
Hated the job and was happy to be out of there. Hated the people. Hated the environment. Was bitter for a while, but it led to me securing many greater jobs from pushing myself to not end up being like them.
Bæ
Laid off at my last company that was bought out.
My fund recently went under, and the entire analyst team received an ALL-TEAM MEETING outlook invite to be held in ten minutes in the conference room with HR, which turned out to be about 20 minutes before the ax was dropped on everyone.
We had all heard whispers of it, so we weren't too surprised. One analyst had been keeping a bottle of scotch in his desk, and we popped it open and downed the whole thing at 10:40am. We then went straight to a local watering hole around 11:00am and proceeded to put back enough alcohol to make sure none of us could drive home... But then we realized we all had to do our severance/HR bullshit meetings that afternoon and collect our things, so we trudged back to the office smelling somewhere in between a bottle of lukewarm Jose Cuervo and Bigfoot's dick. The afternoon's meetings with HR were comical to say the least
There's something about drinking at work that's always extra satisfying, but that's a great story. Good for you guys.
Worked in retail as an assistant manager. I was the most loved by the group. New management came in and fired me and my friend. I told my civil rights lawyer friend the story and he said that we had a very good case for discrimination. I didn't press it any further.
Yes, twice actually. First time, I was working in sales for a Fortune 300 company, but didn't see any future. Their model was to burn out everyone and get every ounce of energy from people before letting them go. The one division I worked in had 40 people, and only 2 of them, managers included, had been with the company 5 or more years. Basically, if you were an all-star and rocked your quota one year, the next year they would raise your quota and shrink your territory. If you beat that, then the next year, they'd give you a fancier new title, but raise your quota and shrink your territory more. One lady senior to me had an emotional breakdown at work the one day and was crying how she would quit if she had another opportunity lined up. They wanted to motivate people to do all they could to fight for their jobs, and contribute more, but nobody really was able to save their job, but only postpone the time until they were let go. Many people networked and switched jobs because they saw the ax coming. In the division I was in, if I did well, I could get 'promoted' to outside sales, where quotas would be even higher, and they let go of over 50% of the people every year, just kept recycling the most motivated hardworking people. So I was able to switch positions to another division, which I was happy for, for about a week - then I realized the career trajectory wasn't any better, and most people in the other division, whichever direction they went, got laid off in about 2-4 years. It wasn't a long-term thing, so when facing potentially being fired since I had basically stopped trying, I ended up just quitting.
The second time I was laid off was for the company I'm currently still working for. I was the first person rehired after a 26-person layoff by upper management based on experience (I had only been with the company 4 months at the time). It had nothing to do with performance, and my personal manager said if it were up to him, he would have picked a couple other people on his team to be let go. My manager offered to walk me out after the layoff, and he told me candidly that I would be the first person he would try to bring back if an opportunity opened up. He had a little more political pull and was respected by upper management. Sure enough, an opportunity opened up in just 3 weeks later - one of the guys who survived the layoff was moving to a new job anyway - so I was the first person they contacted to bring back, and I accepted. I was the only person from the layoff rehired in the next 6 months, since I had worked so hard in my 4 months there, that I impressed them more than others who had been laid off with years of experience. I've been with this company for almost 2 years now, but now looking for something more challenging.
I got canned years ago because my firm found out I was leaving for another one. It was hilarious. I liked the people and wasn't planning on leaving on bad terms, I was going to transition all of my stuff nicely to them but they called me out of the blue on a Sunday night and told me not to come in on Monday and tried to make it seem like I royally fucked up and my life and career were over, yet I had a better job lined up. Better fund, promotion, carry-basically everything I was aiming for. Unfortunately for them when they became bitchy I decided to just turn in my laptop, tell them nothing and take a couple of months off. I kept in touch with a few guys at the old place and they said a few deals I was working on died after putting out some serious diligence dollars and a current investment shit the bed because they had no idea what was going on simply by looking at my laptop and files.
I too feel really bad for people who get laid off living overseas who are dependent on a work Visa. I have a friend in London who was let go due to a pretty large layoff so he was competing against a few thousand other natives for the same jobs. He couldn't find one so he had to move back. He was fine and landed something stateside but one day he thought he may spend his entire life in the UK (had been there 3 or 4 years, had a girlfriend, friends, a life, etc) and a month later he was moving back. Sucked.
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