My husband, “Billy”, has always been the hardest working person I know. Seven years ago, he started as a sales rep for an online marketing company (DM me and I’ll name and shame) and he worked his way all the way up to Director. 60 hours a week and the only time he took “vacation” was to go to the dentist. He consistently got to go on the lavish annual company trips because he was so good in all of his roles. In fact, a week ago they were confirming him to go to the next one in Vegas because he had won again (the last one was in Cancun). He just had his annual review in January and received another raise ($200K a year with commission and worth every penny).
But today, out of nowhere, he got pulled into the CEO’s office and everything changed. He was given the option of 2 months severance (base pay, not commission) or he could be demoted to a senior sales rep. When he asked why, he was given a bullshit answer like, “Our vision of the future does not align”. He knew that Billy eventually wanted to move up to essentially his position when he moved on and I think he felt threatened. Still, Billy tried to get him to elaborate on his reasoning and he was basically told it didn’t matter. The decision is final.
The reason why I put “demoted” in quotes is because they wouldn’t even let him go back to his desk. The rest of the process felt very much like he was fired. Following the “meeting”, they immediately walked him out. They made him wait in the lobby while they packed up his shit and they kept the company laptop. He’s actually leaning towards the demotion until he finds another job so he’s going to need his laptop…
Seven years. When he started, there were only 60 people, tops and now they have hundreds of employees in several states. He helped build yet another company only for the people at the top to profit off of his hard work and then cut him out after he had everything running like a well-oiled machine. I fucking hate corporate America.