I used to find decent jobs without looking too hard, but ever since I moved to Illinois a little over a year ago (for love), I have had the hardest time finding work. I have done housekeeping, Walmart, and soul crushing distribution centers just to get by. That is, until I finally landed a decent job in the industry I know well (food and beverage) about four months ago. The position was the food and beverage manager for a resort, so I was overseeing a busy restaraunt, a cafe, an indoor bar, an outdoor bar, and a pool side shop. The pay was a little on the low side for that amount of work (45k), but I accepted it gladly and without complaint, because it was the first job that my significant other and I would be able to scrape by on with one income. This was important because we have a non-verbal austistic toddler and a new baby coming soon, and that is more than a full time job on it's own. So, I have always showed up to this position on time, had a great attitude, went out of my way to help others and was always asking my boss if there was anything else I could do for them, because I wanted to be as valuable as possible. I was told the hours were a little more (50ish a week), because it was busy season, but when slow season rolled around post labor day, that they would keep me on payroll even though the hours would be closer to 40. I was having a nice time working there, and my significant other even told me how I seemed to be the happiest I'd been since moving states. Well, the last few weeks, busy season has been crawling to a close, and they started in with some serious layoffs. Apparently, this place has trouble finding seasonal work, so they just hire people without telling them it's seasonal, and then let them go for made up reasons at the end of the season. I started to notice this and expressed my concern for my own position to a coworker. Well, apparently I told the wrong person, because the next week they call me into the office and tell me that they heard that I complain about the turnover rate, then they made up a bunch of lies about how I don't seem happy to be there, and that they've heard a lot of complaints about me being unhelpful, and that it's not going to be a good fit. When I tried to question them further, they resorted to saying that Illinois is an “at will” employment state so we can just leave it at that. They went on to say that they would give me a positive recommendation to anyone, which just furthers my theory that this all had nothing to do with my work, as I have never been let go from any other job before. Usually, my bosses end up begging me to stay. However, when I asked them directly if this had anything to with slow season coming up, they said no, this was all just not a good fit. Anyways, I spent half the day today in shock, and tomorrow I'm going to have to start applying again to the terrible job market that is the middle of Illinois, and hopefully get some kind of income stream going because I have three lives besides my own relying on me to do so. We already are trying with food stamps and WIC, and I might have to start donating plasma again. Wish me luck.