I’m hoping this formats okay because I’m on mobile.
Just left a meeting with my higher up that I’m in SHOCK over. I’ve been firmly anti-corporation/work for so long but took this job out of necessity and just found out that due to my girlfriend, I’ll likely be out of work come February.
For background, I work at an established company that’s pretty locally known, and they’ve been branching out slowly over the years bringing on more employees, one of which I was lucky enough to be. There’s a pretty established hierarchy (CEO, CFO, etc) but also an unwritten one based on loyalty and longevity. One of these more tenured employees is a guy we’ll call Franny, who holds the same title as me but is essentially a “made man” here due to his tenure with the company and his closeness with the founder. Franny was dating a girl, who we’ll call Maria, for years when he first started here, but they broke up about a year ago. Maria also works for this company, but they had an amicable breakup and continue working together. Maria and I have worked together for a couple years now and run in the same social circles, so we spend a lot of time together outside of work. Things happened pretty naturally, and the inevitability of our closeness brought us together as more than friends and we started dating. We specifically told Franny that we were dating, and he was okay with it. Naturally, it’s a little weird since we all work together, but we made it a point not to be openly public with our relationship as a way to not make it a thing in front of him.
Fast forward a few months to this week, the founder of the company finds out about mine and Maria’s relationship and he calls me into his office. He’s FURIOUS that I would do what he calls a “scumbag move” by dating a made-man’s girl, and calls me a snake and untrustworthy and all these things. I try to explain myself but he doesn’t care.
Now, here’s the kicker, he doesn’t threaten to fire me outright, but he basically implies that once my contract is up in February that I’m not going to get renewed. He says I bring no real value to the company on my own, and that the work I do is easily replaced, (which to be fair I guess he’s right because I’ve always considered myself to be more of a vibes guy without much of actual talent in my field). So, essentially, when I’m up for renewal in a few months the company will decline to do so and I’ll be out of work.
So now I’m torn on what to do, do I bust my ass these next few months to prove my value and risk turning a profit for this place that might let me go anyways? Do I dump the girl that I would like to marry one day and act like it was a mistake to get back in everyone’s good graces? Do I just no-show this joint and hope I can pick up other work somewhere else?