I'm putting the ox before the cart here but need to savor the moment while I still can. had a couple of great years, huge bonuses then covid, 20% pay cut to save the company but no biggie, unemployment pays that back, ours got hacked, I didn't get paid for months, spent every day on hold with unemployement. end of the year comes, great work people! company saved! bonuses restored!…. but not yours, you weren't as productive this year. oh. kay. not my fault but I guess not theirs either so I let it slide. co worker who has been there for decades does not, hot potato, no bonus, no worky, bye felicia with 5 days notice (highest of fives to that guy) so naturally I get to do his job and my job now. 2 weeks goes by and i've just about got my arms around the nightmare i've been volunteered to enjoy and I decide to be proactive, I can see where this is going and its going to be a lot less strife if we have it out now.
emailed big boss and simply said, just so we dont have hard feelings later, this comes with money, right?! said i was happy to prove myself over 3 months first but then we need to talk, said if that is just no way man, no problem, I'm good at finding people, I'll help HR backfill dudes job AND train the person, I'm just NOT going to be exploited. a week goes by “I guess we are at an impasse” which adds up to me as “we were counting on exploiting you” so they let me go.
its been a year and a half now, have a new job already but its meh. get head hunted by a recruiter because I've got some special acronyms on my resume that aren't super common, they have several clients that need it… so yesterday I'm on my 2nd interview with a really fucking cool company who just gets it (so far) and as the guy is looking down my resume he says oh wow, looks like we juuuust missed you back at xy co! if you'd been there just a little longer you would have worked with us!
so I said, uh, no, not quite. the only other guy than me that knew anything about how to do what you guys do quit a month before I left, they had no choice but to find and hire you to do that work because they had just run us off. so the work I was doing when I got fired for asking to get paid fairly for… I just might continue doing, maybe even for the same company, but for appropriate compensation…which naturally only costs them way more going through a contractor.
like a fresh spring breeze.
🙂