Longtime lurker and big fan on this community, anyway here is my story. My manager basically decided to not renew my contract after 1 year. I was totally blindsided by this decision. When I was hired, it was expected that I signed a 1year contract, but after that there was room for a permanent role. In my last performance review, I was given on some aspects a ‘good’ grade and on others a ‘sufficient, but room for improvement’. My manager basically said that there was no issue with my work ethic or knowledge, but that in some aspects the improvements were not enough (communication and keeping oversight). No examples were given why my performance was not good enough in these aspects, nor was I warned beforehand, that they would fire me.
I was just completely shocked by this decision, and the next day I went to work mainly to ask for more information. Again, the same was stated, without further examples or explanations. During this meeting she started crying, and telling me how nice of a person I was and me how hard this decision was for her (wtf?). In this meeting it was decided that I should tell her what tasks I could still perform for them, even though it must be hard to work for them still. I agreed to think about it and call her later about this.
Now, normally this manager is insanely overbearing and micromanaging, to the point of asking what I am working on multiple times a day, and then berating me when it isn’t fast enough for her liking. Keeping a job mainly between 9 and 5 was also seen as some zany idea. Furthermore, due to the nature of my job, I had to call her sometimes for questions. One simply question that could have been discussed in 5 min, would turn out to be 1.5 hours call. I felt completely drained afterwards. I was glad, to realize, that even she is human after all, when she cried about firing me.
Since I am still on contract, I worked this day until midday, when I just couldn’t take the situation anymore and went home. The next day I of course technically should be working, but since I was fired already, I just spend my day chilling and working on my resume. At the end of the day I called her to let her know that I am still thinking about what tasks to perform in the remaining month.
In this call I was basically berated and told that I should have more answers for her in this time, since I am still on contract and should be working. She also told me, it was not nice, that I left early last day. Afterwards I was completely pissed off.
On the one hand, it does not seem unreasonable to work on some tasks for two months pay. On the other hand, they fucking fired me already, what the hell are they expecting? Antiwork, am I sane here? Why the hell should I do in this situation? How should I handle this? Working with her will be so awkward it will be unbearable.