I work in a library, and today a coworker that I work closely with in the same department as, was fired today. They fired her extremely abruptly– literally during one of her book club programs. I help with the book club, but I am not the head of this department, she was. I am purely an outreach assistant, while she created and executed the in-house programming. I helped out with this programming and it's execution but in no way ran it or created it. This all happened extremely suddenly and I am unbelievably confused— they told me why she was let go, but the reasoning seems odd considering how amazing she did at the job and how loved in the community she is. I haven't even been in my position four months yet, and I definitely do not have the experience nor credentials, nor am I PAID enough to take any sort of reigns over her projects.
The board members told me this as we were finishing the book club with no idea where she had went. They told me to “do my job as usual” and that they're “posting her position tomorrow.”
They truly screwed themselves over, they let go of an amazing person for that job. Very dedicated and hardworking. I am nowhere near qualified or have the passion to do anything to supplement what she did. I am really lost and confused, don't know who to turn to. I want to reach out to her but it hasn't even been three hours yet since this all happened.
I might add, we don't have a head director of our library either. She left just a few weeks prior to this.
It looks to me, really strange and, well kind of bad, to me, as basically a new employee. I am starting to think maybe I should quietly begin to look for something else. Because this, to me, is off-putting.
I was wondering if anyone here has any advice for this sort of situation. I am just a recent college graduate and this is my first “real” job, so I obviously have no idea what to truly make of this. And neither does anyone else I have talked to about this.