I recently moved to a big city and have been having a surprisingly hard time finding a job in the area. Earlier this week however, I interviewed, got hired at, and filled out all of the paperwork for a live sound/barback position at a small music venue in town. I don't like to work, but I was looking forward to starting to earn again, as I've been unemployed for over a month now. I'm also a musician and was excited about the aspect of working at a concert venue.
Fast forward to today, only 2 days after I got “hired,” and the night I am supposed to start training. But around 3pm I get a call from the owner telling me that he sold the bar, and that the new owners already have trained people ready to run sound, so I lost the job before I was even able to start training. His explanation was that he was already in the process of trying to sell the place, but was expecting it to take several more weeks or months, so he was thinking he could get me trained and already working there by the time new owners stepped in, but the selling process ended up being a lot quicker than expected.
I'm kind of just left scratching my head and thinking “WTF?” about this… Is this normal in any way? I get that he wasn't expecting the place to sell so soon, but I figured either way it would be common curtsey to tell potential employees that they are planning to sell, as new ownership at an establishment is often followed by some employees being let go? Just seems kind of seedy and overall pretty unprofessional… Would love to hear what y'all think of this.