Not sure if this will be productive or not, but at the least I’ll be able to vent to people who might understand even if they can’t help.
So about 3 months ago, I was working for a company in the in-house sales (upgrading accounts) department. It was all new, but I was picking up on it quickly and learning through my mentor who has been in the business for over 20 years. There were ups and downs, but I made it work and the commission was incredible. (~$1,500 for one sale which averaged around 2 hours of work).
I worked there in 2021 for about 3 months as well but got laid off for the winter. No big deal as I was brought back once the season started again. About a month into the 2022 season, upper management took an iron grip by firing a handful of people, demoting all managers except two who were named Director of Sales (frontline and in-house) and then changed the entire format for the memberships we were selling. My mentor was one of the ones who was demoted and took a 60% pay cut, which led to him leaving alongside literally everyone else at my location.
Everything unsurprisingly started going downhill quickly and I was floundering, asking for help from anyone I could (especially my Director), buying in-house sales books, packing legal pads with notes from other salesmen’s presentations, recording meetings, anything I could to improve.
It was around this point I saw that you could look up PPP loans publicly, so I did out of curiosity. I looked up a few companies I’ve worked for on the past, then some massive companies (Microsoft, Google, etc), and then the company I worked for. The company had taken out over $4,000,000 worth of loans forgiven and claimed way too many employees. I thought “These are my tax dollars, no fucking way!” So I reported them to the SBA for investigation.
Then on my day off, I picked my wife up from our work (same location). The second manager pulled me aside while I was waiting for my wife and said “You didn’t make the cut.” I thought I was being laid off again, but then found out I was fired. I even called my primary DoS and yelled at him because we just had a conversation about how they had a plan in place so nobody got laid off this year. He said nothing about it other than “Sorry man, it’s just numbers”. This was to the point where I had filed for unemployment under the pretense of being laid off. I found out a little bit later I was fired, and updated my unemployment information accordingly.
I contacted a lawyer regarding wrongful termination/retaliation against a whistleblower, but the lawyer wouldn’t work on contingency and wanted a retainer which I couldn’t afford anytime in the near future, so I explained that to him and left it at that.
So I’ve been looking for a new job, but just got a notice from UIA that I was fired for “Misconduct: violation of policy” and they needed more information. I told them honestly that I was barely aware I was fired, let alone for misconduct!
So now I’m sitting here seething with rage and confusion and I’m panicking that I’m going to lose my unemployment benefits and have to get another dead end job with only one car between my wife and I and barely any money. My ADHD has become unbridled at this point which makes it almost impossible to focus or remember things of import. I have a hard time even getting out of bed because of the depression and anxiety.
Hopefully somebody here can point me in the right direction or at least give some kind words. Do I contact the lawyer again and take out a loan to pay for it? Is there a government body that will actually do something about this? Do I just sit here and take it up the ass? I’m so lost…
tl;dr Possibly got fired for whistleblowing on PPP loans and now the company is claiming it was for misconduct. I’m so stressed out I can’t even think straight. Where do I go from here?