This happened to me back in June of this year, but I wanted to share this with y'all to hear your thoughts.
I started this job at a dispensary near me as a packaging technician. The first two months I was there, I only packaged this one specific brand of vapes. The third month I was there, I was moved to a different section of the building due to a conflict with my supervisor (which is a whole other enraging story) and I did a little bit of everything there (gummies, vapes, prerolls, tinctures, etc.). While I was there, my QCers constantly gave me praise for being one of the fastest and having some of the highest output numbers in the room. They would even have me fill in for them when they would take their 15s. I loved my job. It was perfect for me. I'm autistic, so being able to sit in a comfy chair with headphones on all day putting stickers on things was a blast. The pay was great for someone like me. I was making $18/hour plus overtime and holiday pay. I was actually able to save up for a down payment on a small house during this time. I always went home smelling like weed. Things were great.
Well one day they hired a few new people. They were all placed at different tables with the more experienced workers, myself included, so they could be monitored. The guy who was placed next to me was a nice dude. See, when I was hired in, I was given paid training before being put on the job, so I assumed the same for him. Turns out he had no training because I had to teach him everything. I didn't think it was a big deal at the time because he was nice and willing to learn and I like being a teacher.
A few days later, the topic of our wages came up. My other coworkers and I were raving about our pay, saying that we were finally financially stable for once. My new partner chimed in saying that it wasn't much of a difference for him. We all shared glances of “huh?” before asking what his pay was. He stated $15/hour. We were all shocked to hear that. Why would they hire him in at $3 less than the rest of us if we all came in without relevant experience? We were all very confused and told him that maybe he should speak with HR.
Well, he never really got that chance I guess. Because only a few days after that conversation, the building manager (big boss) and one of our supervisors comes in with two beefed up bodyguards and starts reading names off of a list, about 10 at a time. The building manager informs those who were called that we were being let go. When a coworker asked why (with tears in her eyes) she said it was “performance-based.” My ass. When another coworker said that was bullshit while comforting the crying coworker, this bitch giggled. They read off several of these lists of names. Mine was on the first list, most of my friends were on the second. We were all forced out of the building, 10 minutes before the end of our shift. The bodyguards yelled at us as we scrambled to grab all our personal belongings and return our key cards. Almost everyone was crying at this point. They even fired people who had committed years to them. It was a horror show.
You know who wasn't on those lists? All those new people they just hired in at $15/hour. The ones that we trained for them. In the end, they fired about 50 people with no legitimate reason. I think we all know why.