So I've been browsing this sub for some months now, and it dawned on me I have a story that might have a story fitting for this sub.
I'll have to make a long story short – with more detail this would be way too long.
When I was young I got an entry level job in manufacturing and stared out on the floor. Through hard work I was pretty quickly recognized and promoted to floor manager. Got along with fellow employees quite well, and treated them well in my managerial type role. And we were highly productive in this non-dramatic environment, out-producing our main location in another state with 5 times the production. Unfortunately because we were smaller and not at the main location, when the economy tanked they let everyone go and moved production to the main site. Except myself, and the current Regional Sales Manager in that area. Totally sucked seeing those guys go and I felt so bad for them, even though we all kind of saw the writing on the wall. So at least they weren't totally blindsided by it. In my case however I was brought in and they asked me if I wanted to be the inside sales rep for the Regional Sales Manager (and his territory). I took the promotion. I did quite well in that role, and when he retired I was given the Regional Sales Manager role running a 5-6 million dollar a year territory (with 62 customers I visited regularly and took great care of). Hard work, and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears got me there. And it was an excellent company and our GM was fabulous to work for. We had get togethers and people actually wanted to be at them. Very family like in a good way and I was close to a lot of them. Everything was great – had a nice gig, got to travel for that gig, married to an awesome wife, got to work from home, nice house and car. For a guy with no college education, I had sort of “made it”.
5 years later our owner who was in his 70's decided to sell the company, to a much larger corporation who was a competitor. Just like that we went from a 33 million dollar a year company to what I was told was a 9 billion dollar a year global corporation (I'm not sure on that number and have my doubts). And that's when the fuckery begins. The very first thing they did was let our GM go in two days (huge mistake but that's another story). We were all on edge, and after 15 years with this company and the people it was incredibly unnerving to suddenly have the ground taken from under us. For me, I started having very strange feelings and sort of out of body experiences. Saw a counsellor about it and was diagnosed as having “hyperarousal”. I can't even tell you how strange and terrible it was and I couldn't get my brain out of this fear. And they started doing really shitty things to customers I had long standing relationships with, especially the smaller ones. I was getting a taste of the ruthlessness of corporate America for the first time. This was all after them saying from the start they wouldn't make changes and mess with our “secret-sauce”. What a bunch of bullshit. They took that sauce and shit all over it.
Then, after having pissed so many people off and not servicing them at all, my territory was decimated and ultimately they got rid of me after taking over 7 months prior. Eventually all four Regional Sales Managers were let go. First thing I did after that 8AM firing was start drinking. I was crushed, dealing with this hyperarousal bullshit, and alone, so I hit the bottle. Alright fine just that one day right? I did get and accept an offer with another company that was a competitor of ours, but I simply could not work. Mentally I was completely broken. Made it three months with that company. With this mental shit I had going on I ultimately got into a viscous alcohol addiction, did not work, and eventually lost my dear wife of 13 years (20 years relationship). One horrible thing after another. Because I nearly killed myself three times with excessive alcohol consumption, I was forcefully moved from a city I love to my hometown that I hate while the divorce was beginning. And got basically no support afterwards. 2 DUI's later, I entered rehab. I am sober now and back working, but still not completely back on my feet and the person I thought I'd spend forever with is permanently gone. All because a ruthless, money driven corporation did what ruthless money driven corporations do.
Hope this wasn't too long. This is the much shorter version, there is so much left out but I tried to hit the most relevant points.
Fuck human greed.