Context:
I was a marketing executive at a medium size company in a large metropolitan area (USA). In the past 2.5 years my team and I have achieved dozens of things for the company but the bottom line is we were directly responsible for growing our annual revenue by 35% year over year. I have the data proving this fact and presented it to the president of my former company during my annual review at the beginning of November. I received nothing but praise. In fact, he has never had a complaint about me or the department I built throughout my tenure.
We got a new COO a few months ago and he's been on a tear restructuring and firing people left and right but the presendent of the company reassured me over and over that my team was safe because we're doing “excellent work.”
Story:
On November 30th (the last day of the month) at noon I get called into a zoom meeting with the President. When I signed in, I knew immediately something was up because the new COO of our company was on the call too. He doesn't do shit and never attends meetings. The President signs on and begins with “Let's cut to the chase, we're letting you go…”
He proceeds to outline 2 problems he has with me:
- I don't spend 8 hours a day logged into my PC (my average was 6)
- I don't drop all priorities right away when he wants to try something new
Obviously these were bullshit reasons and it was immediately apparent they were grasping at straws so I started to probe. He eventually confessed they were signing with an agency to replace my entire team as a cost cutting measure. They were pushing the narrative of me having performance issues so that they can say I was fired with cause making it more difficult for me to sue them or file for unemployment.
Needless to say I was completely blindsided and felt really stupid. It takes months to vet and sign an agency agreement meaning they've been planning this under my nose for a long while. I never saw it coming.
Here's the kicker – because it was the last day of the month. I had roughly 12 hours of notice before I, my wife, and my children lost our health insurance (because America for those of you from a more civilized country). When I asked about severance – they said there would be none because I did not have an employment contract with them that required a severance. I received my last paycheck the next day. I spoke with an employment attorney and they said there's nothing I can do.
I don't plan on ever letting something like this happened again. I'm tired of working for other people, making them millions, and being strewn aside like nothing. It's time to do my own thing.
Thanks for letting me vent Reddit…
TLDR:
Company fired me and most of my team using bullshit reasons as a cost-cutting measure to replace us with an agency. They provided no notice, no severance, and I lost my health insurance the next day.