Long story incoming, would appreciate advice but the core question is contained within the post title
I’ve worked for a company for the past 1+ years and enjoyed it for the most part. I’m even embarrassed to say that I drank some corporate koolaid and thought this company might be different. Shame on me.
The company has recently started struggling worse than any time in its history because of the economy. Their financials would clearly benefit from laying off certain of their workforce (including my department) but here is the catch: it is a point of pride and branding for this company that they have never had to do a layoff, and they clearly want to hold onto that status. So they’re getting creative with how they thin the herd.
I had told my manager a little while back that I wasn’t enjoying working in Profession X anymore and wanted to transfer to Profession Y if there was an opportunity. To be clear, I have still consistently been a strong performer in my current role. I have never not hit a goal, never not earned my bonus, I was just on promotion-track before the company cancelled promotions, etc. I also recorded my boss and HR clearly talking about my high performance just today. So regardless of my lack of excitement for my current role, I am still getting shit done and they know it.
My manager comes to me with an idea earlier this week: “we know you don’t love your current job, and we want you to be happy. We’d like to give you the opportunity to voluntarily resign, and we’ll give you 1 month of severance so that you have time to find a job you’re excited about.” While part of this sounds appealing as it would be nice to have a full month without work to find a new job, I know I’d be denied unemployment because if I quit and who knows how long it will take to find a new job in this economy. I also know that the primary motivation for this request does not come from a desire for me to be happy or from poor performance, it comes from the fact that they need to lay people off but cant lay people off, lest they harm their brand.
So I had a meeting with HR and gave a counter proposal: fire me instead. 1 month severance is not enough for me to be secure, but unemployment would give me 6 months to find new work. It would let the company avoid losing your “never laid someone off” status, and would take me off their payroll (and eliminate a need for severance), and I could focus my full efforts into finding a new job.
The response from the HR lady felt so deceptive: “we won’t be firing you because we don’t have a performance reason to do so, so firing you would be dishonest and we value integrity here.” But, like, we live in an at-will employment state. You don’t have to have a performance reason to fire me, you can fire me for whatever reason you want. There’s nothing dishonest about it.
I tried to explain to her why being fired was preferable for me than resigning because of its effects on unemployment eligibility, and she tried to convince me that “even if you’re fired there’s no guarantee, and even if you resign there’s a chance”. Haha.
So basically I have 3 options: try harder to get them to fire me without crossing any lines, accept their 1 month severance and resign, or continue working in my role until I find a new job or am fired. Any recommendations from the r/antiwork crew? And why do you think they won’t fire me despite it being seemingly better for everyone involved? Is the increased cost to unemployment insurance really that expensive? Thanks 🙂