So I recently got fired by my friend of 12 years.
Backstory, so I recently got out of the Army and was looking for a new job and this guy who I’ve been friends with for 12 years told me about this startup he’s trying to make work. He offered me the position to be the general manager and I took him up on it. There’s about a 30 year age gap between us, he was my old track coach that I’ve kept in pretty good contact with ever since I graduated high school. He was kind of like a mentor to me growing up in some ways.
Anyway, I worked for him for 5 months, the job was a little weird. We were trying to market Frankincense essential oil, I was in charge of distilling it and I guess packaging/bottling it as well.
Everything seemed to be going well, we joked and were amicable as we usually are.
Then out of nowhere, I get a text from him telling me to check my personal email. This was a Sunday night at like 8PM so I figured it was just him telling me what I had to do for the following week. Nope. It was a termination email.
His reason for termination? A package I sent arrived broken. I sent a 1 liter glass bottle of oil across the country. I didn’t exactly have the proper packaging supplies to ship large glass bottles, I was just reusing stuff from packages that I received. If I had like specialty made boxes like they used to ship wine bottles then this could have been a different story but didn’t have that.
This loss was probably worth approximately $1500, a big loss for sure. But the funny thing is, the customer only wanted 100ml, not the 500ml that I sent (500ml in a 1 liter bottle). My boss fucked up the order and told me 500. If he had told me 100, I could have used a much smaller bottle which would have been easier to ship and wouldn’t have broken.
But honestly, I think I really only got terminated was because he was looking to outsource my job. I kinda saw it coming, hell I helped him find someone to do it.
I could have accepted that, sometimes a business just isn’t profitable unless you outsource. But the fact that he fired me via email, wouldn’t return any of my calls, texts, or emails is what really gets me. A man that I have know, respected, and considered a friend for 12 years didn’t have the balls to fire me to my face. I despise cowardice.
It wasn’t even like his livelihood depended on this business. The man has owned multiple businesses, is a millionaire, has a second home in Arizona, and lives on a ranch with horses.
I haven’t seen or heard from him since. Guess that bridge is burnt.
So yeah, that’s the story of how I lost a friend of 12 years, guess the moral of the story is that you never really know someone until money is involved.