For context, I worked alongside two other co-workers. We were in the software industry.
About a month before the date we were told that they will be moving us to a sister company and that we could expect some kind of raise. Profit sharing, inflation, and overtime adjustment were “promised” to be reflected in this raise. I'm still young but I learned a long time ago that you take those kinds of words with a grain of salt. Nothing personal, just business.
Anyways, fast forward to a few days ago, our manager was taking us in 1 by 1 to meet and discuss the contract. Again there were 3 of us in total including myself. I never went in for my meeting. The first guy went in and signed his contract. The second guy wanted more money so he asked if our manager could speak with the owner(s). I only learned this after asking.
About an hour later they pull us 3 into a meeting and terminate us on the spot. The owner stated that someone was not happy with what they could offer as a smaller company, then called them by name. He went on and explained that when people aren't happy with pay things just don't work out. There is certainly some truth in that I suppose. He also explained that he (the owner) has invested a lot of money into us/the project and that it no longer makes fiscal sense. This also stuck me odd. It was well known and accepted that it would take us year(s) to deliver what they were asking for.
This was a bit of a shock to me as I thought i was about to have a good day and get some kind of a raise and finally work on the project they hired me to do. I mildly expressed my surprise and said something along the lines of “i respect your decision, but this seems like a complete 180 flip to me, im surprised.”. The owner replied that “you were just caught up in the middle of this, i'm sorry”. hmm… okay.
To the raw point of hey i spent money and have not seen returns to justify the cost leaves you little to say when being fired. I can understand this point. What I didn't understand was why couldn't they have just gone back to the other guy and said this is the absolute highest number we could offer? It seemed to me that the owner and/or my manager took offense to this inquiry. And instead fired all of us.
How normal is this? To be honest the guy that wanted more money does work his ass off. Just seemed like a good thing was lost when it could have easily been fixed. Funny enough were were only ever told great things about our work. I actually enjoyed working there too. but the way everything was left off put me into a shock of mostly confusion.