So, last Tuesday I got called into a meeting with the president, and was simply told “we’re dismissing you for performance reasons at the end of June.” No warnings, write-ups, PIPs, major losses/scandals, complaints, nothing. I’d recently been able to achieve “fuck you” money, so I’d been thinking about when to pull the trigger and retire, but it still came as a bit of a surprise. I pretty much just shrugged, said “ok” and went back to my desk.
Wednesday met with the finance manager, who said to talk with him Friday (5/31). Friday he said severance pay isn’t company policy, but they want me to use my remaining PTO during June (from Monday 6/3) and they’ll compensate me for the remainder (I had about 39 days). He also told me not to tell anyone. I said I had a task on Monday that needed to get done and there wasn’t time to reassign it, and I wasn’t going to be a dick to my co-workers.
Monday I did what needed to get done, made sure everyone I cared about knew exactly what was going on, packed my shit and left.
Tuesday morning I heard that the boss told everyone “I had no idea he’d leave so suddenly, it’s really inconsiderate of him”.
Wednesday I talked to a lawyer, who will be sending a letter of demands next week on Monday. 6 months salary as severance (I figure 1 month for each year worked is more than fair). “Company policy” doesn’t mean dick against Japanese labor laws. I’ll be back in after that on Wednesday to drop off remaining items and will make sure more people know what happened.