I've been at this company since 2016, an order picking/packing warehouse, and since 2019 I've been the supervisor of a team of 3.
A month ago I decided I needed a week off, I don't normally take time off because when we're down to 3 workers for more than a few days we start to fall behind. But I hadn't had any time off since last year so I deserved it. Notified the boss months in advance and all was well. Made sure before I went that everything was stocked and organised so my guys wouldn't fall behind.
First Monday of my week off I get a text, one of my guys got covid and would be off for a week, and they were the only person besides me who can legally operate the forklift. So now the team was halved and nobody could move heavy stock around or load trucks. Boss said it was ok, he'd do the forklift and I was thankful he didn't try to ask me back. I didn't think anything of it until I came back to work the following week.
Monday morning on my first week back I get called up into the office, where the boss informed me my position and that of the worker who was sick would be made redundant and this was my one month notice. Blamed the recession, rising transport costs, the usual bullshit. But I knew from talking with the 2 guys who were on that week that the boss was impressed by the work they were doing, not realising it was partly because of me having set them up with a lot of pre-packed stock. Their theory and mine was that he decided he can get by with 2 staff in the warehouse instead of 4. In the end I wasn't fussed, I have been looking into shifting careers anyway as I've been feeling a bit stagnant here.
That other worker soon found another job and was out by the end of that week, with a nearly $20 an hour pay increase into a high demand forklift job that was closer to home for them. I stayed on for the 4 weeks just to make sure my team would be ok, and just to give myself time to look for work. But as the weeks wore on and we started to fall behind you could see the gears in my boss' head turning as he realised that pretty soon he'd have no forklift drivers and a lot of back orders. The day before I left he asked if I'd be willing to stay on for another month, but I told him I'd already had another job lined up (didn't tell him it was also $10 an hour more than he paid me). On my last day he asked if I'd want to come in on the weekends, told him no sorry I have family obligations.
TL;DR my boss tried to save money by letting go his 2 most experienced workers and his only forklift drivers, regrets his decision far too late.
Sorry this ones kinda slow, no blow ups, no dramatic walk outs, no rubbing better offers in anyones faces, just another boss cutting costs and accidentally cutting too much.