For those of you who don’t already know, I lost my job back at the end of January
this year. It was a bit of a surprise, but in retrospect, I think I knew it was
coming. The division of the company I was working for didn’t make any sales last
year, so they had to cut costs and cut development of the software I was working on
so they could focus on generating sales this year.
The job itself was pretty good, but a little on the mundane side. It paid well, and
had a few nice perks, such as a company laptop and occasional travel to another
office in Halifax. The best thing about that job was that I worked from home most of
the time, which saved me a lengthy commute to north Toronto.
How I got canned:
During the last week of January, my boss called me and asked me to come in to the
office on a Saturday. He travels a lot for business (he’s out of the country at
least half of each month), so it was often difficult to meet up at a standard time.
I went to the office on Saturday, expecting to hear some stories about his recent
travels to the Caribbean or perhaps discuss some upcoming issues with the software
we were working on. Instead, we went to his office, he gave me an envelope, told me
to open it and then left the room. I sat there by myself for a few minutes, reading
the ‘letter of termination’ they gave me. Things seemed a little fishy from the
start, but I wasn’t expecting this to be the way our Saturday meeting would go. A
few moments later, my boss came back to the room and asked me what I thought. Being
a little bit frazzled, I told him I was disappointed, but I understood. He then
proceeded to take me out for lunch with another associate.
It was a little bit weird going to lunch with your ex-boss when you were just laid
off 15 minutes beforehand. Lunch was civil, with a few awkward moments, but there
were no hard feelings in the end. Mostly.
The timing was actually kind of good in a way, as I had my family vacation to the
Dominican Republic just two weeks later. I also received a decent severance
package, which was enough to tide me over for my three months of unemployment. It
was a nice break, and now I’m back in the workforce with a local company. But I’ll
leave that story for part two…