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This Is How Fast Your Boss Can Drop You

A post of a ranting nature...

AlexLegault

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So I've been fired from my job today. I'm kind of pissed, not gonna lie.

I was working a dead-end job as a restaurant host here in Canada.

Long story short, my boss (manager) made me come in to work for nothing to work half an hour and they sent me home and didn't want to pay me the full 3 hours (I offered to stay for at least 3 hours so they don't waste their money).

Naturally, I complained about it to the owner via text message.

I figured, "hey, he's the big boss and he's probably objective and will understand, right?"

Wrong.

Not even close.

I texted him to tell him how I didn't appreciate having the manager tell me to come in for nothing and at the very least would like to be compensated for 3 hours since they wasted my time and money to get to work (I was supposed to spend that evening with my father for his birthday too).

He told me he wouldn't pay me since I "wasn't on the schedule" and started getting mad saying I was "causing him so much trouble".

By the end I stopped replying and he said he'd pay me the three hours.

That's when he said we obviously didn't see eye to eye on the situation and that he could see it being an issue later.


And that's when the magic words came.


"You are being terminated effective immediately, thank you."


And that's how fast an a**hole boss can drop you.


Lesson learned: When you start feeling comfortable at your job, just remember that you can get dropped at the snap of a finger and your life was always in another man's hands.
 
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It's a great education. It will strengthen your backbone. And... life has much more in front of you.

EVERY employee other than the owner is 100% dispensable.
 

MJ DeMarco

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Lesson learned: When you start feeling comfortable at your job, just remember that you can get dropped at the snap of a finger and your life was always in another man's hands.

Keep in mind, customers can fire you at the drop of a dime as well.

As entrepreneurs, we're not immune from getting fired.

We go from 1 boss (a job) to hundreds, hopefully millions.
 

ProcessPro

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So I've been fired from my job today. I'm kind of pissed, not gonna lie.

I was working a dead-end job as a restaurant host here in Canada.

Long story short, my boss (manager) made me come in to work for nothing to work half an hour and they sent me home and didn't want to pay me the full 3 hours (I offered to stay for at least 3 hours so they don't waste their money).

Naturally, I complained about it to the owner via text message.

I figured, "hey, he's the big boss and he's probably objective and will understand, right?"

Wrong.

Not even close.

I texted him to tell him how I didn't appreciate having the manager tell me to come in for nothing and at the very least would like to be compensated for 3 hours since they wasted my time and money to get to work (I was supposed to spend that evening with my father for his birthday too).

He told me he wouldn't pay me since I "wasn't on the schedule" and started getting mad saying I was "causing him so much trouble".

By the end I stopped replying and he said he'd pay me the three hours.

That's when he said we obviously didn't see eye to eye on the situation and that he could see it being an issue later.


And that's when the magic words came.


"You are being terminated effective immediately, thank you."


And that's how fast an a**hole boss can drop you.


Lesson learned: When you start feeling comfortable at your job, just remember that you can get dropped at the snap of a finger and your life was always in another man's hands.

I almost got fired from my job as a bank teller all because of a foolish micro manager that loved to give commands/exercise his authority just for the sake of it. I used to assert myself unlike the other employees in our branch and he never liked me as a result. He was literally waiting for me to make a mistake. One time he came and intervened my transaction with a customer for no good reason which I felt was against the banks documented procedures, so I told him no, refusing to take his instruction. Next thing, I was called into his office and accused of insubordination, which it was, but simply because I was not complying with an instruction that defied the bank's procedure and my priority as a teller.

The next day, I was placed on a program for performance improvement, which is really a sort of warning program, one step away from being fired. Long story short, something similar happened again, and while the bank was deliberating on how to handle it, I took the initiative to resign, because I knew I would be fired. I know I'm not being biased and mis-perceiving the scenarios because most of the employees in the branch hold the same opinion of him and have had similar experiences with him.

For the next few months, I went to work in my mother's pitiful little shop. Talk about a step down. Decided to download some books to read to deal with the boredom, because the shop was so dead in terms of customers. That's how I found and read TMF (bought my copy honestly at a later time out of respect for MJ and a sense of obligation/conscience for the transformation it had on my thinking.)

Also purchased unscripted and now finishing it up with my mate. Honestly, if I did not get 'fired'/forced out, the series of events will not have led to me reading TMF and being in the pursuit of the unscripted life as I am now. I felt as if my world crumbled during those days following that meeting in the manager's office etc. You probably feel uncomfortable too, but a couple years from now, you'll look back and be glad. If the market confirms that my asset is a productocracy, I'll be making my manager's annual salary in a month or less. Hope it works out for me, and also for you, and together, we'll laugh at those scripted fools.
 
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I've been there too.

Life lesson:
"Employment at will" means that at any time they can say, "We won't."


One of the top reasons I've got to make business work for me, is so no one person (other than me) can ever again cut off 100% of my income.
 
D

Deleted50669

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You are not alone, sir. I've seen it happen to numerous colleagues of mine. Even folks with masters and PhDs who you'd think are insulated from the risk of termination. We are all replaceable in the labor market. That's why we have to leave the labor market and create our own product market. Develop a product and put the product to work.
 

AlexLegault

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I used to assert myself unlike the other employees in our branch and he never liked me as a result. He was literally waiting for me to make a mistake.

Man, I can completely relate to that.

That's EXACTLY what they were doing to me (except they were the one's to screw up. Go figure.)
 
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AlexLegault

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You are not alone, sir. I've seen it happen to numerous colleagues of mine. Even folks with masters and PhDs who you'd think are insulated from the risk of termination.

That's pretty scary honestly.

I lost a shit job so it's not a big deal to me..

But for someone who has a more "expensive lifestyle" and has tons of bills to pay, that must suck big time.
 

ProcessPro

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Man, I can completely relate to that.

That's EXACTLY what they were doing to me (except they were the one's to screw up. Go figure.)

Yup. When I decided to escalate the matter with Employee relations, it turns out he has friends in that department and they are all one clique, so it was futile. Things I confided to ER got straight back to him etc. And like you, I expected objectivity and a fair hearing per their pathyways to conflict resolution booklets etc. Waste of time.
 

biophase

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So I've been fired from my job today. I'm kind of pissed, not gonna lie.

I was working a dead-end job as a restaurant host here in Canada.

Long story short, my boss (manager) made me come in to work for nothing to work half an hour and they sent me home and didn't want to pay me the full 3 hours (I offered to stay for at least 3 hours so they don't waste their money).

Naturally, I complained about it to the owner via text message.

I figured, "hey, he's the big boss and he's probably objective and will understand, right?"

Wrong.

Not even close.

I texted him to tell him how I didn't appreciate having the manager tell me to come in for nothing and at the very least would like to be compensated for 3 hours since they wasted my time and money to get to work (I was supposed to spend that evening with my father for his birthday too).

He told me he wouldn't pay me since I "wasn't on the schedule" and started getting mad saying I was "causing him so much trouble".

By the end I stopped replying and he said he'd pay me the three hours.

That's when he said we obviously didn't see eye to eye on the situation and that he could see it being an issue later.


And that's when the magic words came.


"You are being terminated effective immediately, thank you."


And that's how fast an a**hole boss can drop you.


Lesson learned: When you start feeling comfortable at your job, just remember that you can get dropped at the snap of a finger and your life was always in another man's hands.

The other side of the story could be that you weren't doing a great job and they wanted to let you go anyway. No business will fire an employee that is doing good work. Were you a good host? Did they hire another that they wanted to give more hours too? Or maybe you just ruffled a few feathers or didn't get along with other employees. Or maybe the restaurant is losing money and they don't even need a host. All I'm saying is step back and think about it. There might have been things that you didn't see or even notice about yourself.
 
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Late Bloomer

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Yup. When I decided to escalate the matter with Employee relations

I found out the hard way that Employee Relations is a misnamed department. The term is a euphemism. The actual title is, The People Who Get Employees Cowering So They Shut Up, Quit, And Don't Sue Us. The company where I learned this, was in the news because in other class action incidents, one for customers and one for employees in another division, the company paid a billion dollars, literally, in fines "without admitting any guilt." If you really don't have any guilt, won't a billion dollars buy a lot of attorneys?? After I had left... couldn't get unemployment because I'd "voluntarily quit" when I was concerned about some potentially illegal activity... and the statute of limitations had run out... and the company was in the news for being bought out by its biggest competitor... I found out that the unpaid overtime issue alone, that they got me to STFU up about, was easily another half billion dollar issue for them between the fines and statutory penalties and management's deliberately deceitful misrepresentations. About 1,500 person division, most people working unpaid overtime for years because the company lied that overtime law didn't apply to those jobs when it actually did apply to everyone without supervisory authority, times something like a $1,000/day fine to the state Labor Board per willful violation, plus restitution of all the back pay. Whatever they paid the little cabal that got me to quit and not go to an attorney, it was a millionfold ROI for the company! EMPLOYEE RELATIONS IS PROBABLY NOT YOUR FRIEND.
 
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No business will fire an employee that is doing good work.

That's total bullshit. There are a lot of places where office politics, pecking order, scratch-my-back favorites, nepotism, entrenched incompetents circling the wagons to protect each other, conspiracies both legal and illegal, matter a hell of a lot. And objectively provable excellence at the assigned tasks and functions of the job, don't matter.
 

Late Bloomer

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But for someone who has a more "expensive lifestyle" and has tons of bills to pay, that must suck big time.

MJ's next big market might be Japan. In the US, if you lose a big time job, many people are willing to accept that for whatever reason, it just happened to not work out, so you can try something new. The Japanese system has been based for decades on the premise that you go from college into a big company, or a supplier orbiting a big company, and that's where you work for your entire career. If you lose the job you are really screwed big time. But companies there are starting to want to gain Western-style labor efficiency and cost flexibility, by throwing people overboard whenever it's convenient for management. They're going to increasingly have mid-career and up people stunned, shocked, unable to find anything at all to do in the work force... and maybe willing to rip up the script, if someone can show them how.
 
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ProcessPro

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The other side of the story could be that you weren't doing a great job and they wanted to let you go anyway. No business will fire an employee that is doing good work. Were you a good host? Did they hire another that they wanted to give more hours too? Or maybe you just ruffled a few feathers or didn't get along with other employees. Or maybe the restaurant is losing money and they don't even need a host. All I'm saying is step back and think about it. There might have been things that you didn't see or even notice about yourself.

True. Worth thinking about.
 

Late Bloomer

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Wait. Did you get fired via a text message?

That might've been a huge strategic mistake, it should've been by Snapchat so that the evidence was automatically deleted!:rofl:
 
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AlexLegault

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The other side of the story could be that you weren't doing a great job and they wanted to let you go anyway. No business will fire an employee that is doing good work. Were you a good host? Did they hire another that they wanted to give more hours too? Or maybe you just ruffled a few feathers or didn't get along with other employees. Or maybe the restaurant is losing money and they don't even need a host. All I'm saying is step back and think about it. There might have been things that you didn't see or even notice about yourself.

I'm very doubtful about that. I always did what had to be done and at one point the owner even pointed at me while looking at the other employees while saying "You see this guy? He's the fastest one here out of all of you."

However.. I DID get the job through an employment centre. The owner had to sign a contract saying he would give me 30 hours a week minimum (which he didn't).

The employment agency emailed me asking why I wasn't "taking the hours". "Your boss says you don't want the hours. Why is that?"

To which I replied.. "Really? That's interesting, he never talked to me about that." Therefore he was caught in a lie and they told him to give me more hours. That was a few days ago.

So to answer that, yeah, he probably couldn't afford it and wanted to get rid of me for that reason.
 
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AlexLegault

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Yup. When I decided to escalate the matter with Employee relations, it turns out he has friends in that department and they are all one clique, so it was futile. Things I confided to ER got straight back to him etc. And like you, I expected objectivity and a fair hearing per their pathyways to conflict resolution booklets etc. Waste of time.
What a joke..
 

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The owner had to sign a contract saying he would give me 30 hours a week minimum (which he didn't).

The employment agency emailed me asking....

You need to talk with the agency right away. They might be able to work something out. Also, they might owe you money for which they're legally obligated to pay, and it would be up to them to sue the restaurant owner. But don't go there with them, just talk to them and find out. If they give you a "nothing we can do" song and dance, find a local labor law attorney who does free initial consultations, give them the super concise version of the facts, and find out what they have to say. You might only have the right to walk away, but there might be some further option for you to know about.
 
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AlexLegault

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You need to talk with the agency right away. They might be able to work something out. Also, they might owe you money for which they're legally obligated to pay, and it would be up to them to sue the restaurant owner. But don't go there with them, just talk to them and find out. If they give you a "nothing we can do" song and dance, find a local labor law attorney who does free initial consultations, give them the super concise version of the facts, and find out what they have to say. You might only have the right to walk away, but there might be some further option for you to know about.
I have an appointment with the agency tomorrow.

And they definitely do. I called the labor board, told them my situation and they said it fell under "wrongful dismissal".
 
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AlexLegault

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That's hilarious! I'm sure you don't think it is but it made me chuckle. Don't waste anymore time on this and move on to your next venture. You'll end up with something better. f*ck 'em.
I thought the snapchat comment above was hilarious, lmao.

You're right though. F*ck 'em and on to the next thing.
 

biophase

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That's total bullshit. There are a lot of places where office politics, pecking order, scratch-my-back favorites, nepotism, entrenched incompetents circling the wagons to protect each other, conspiracies both legal and illegal, matter a hell of a lot. And objectively provable excellence at the assigned tasks and functions of the job, don't matter.

Sure there's always office politics and friends and favors, but when it comes down to cutting someone, you have to ask if that person is indispensable or not.

I've been in enough meetings we where talk about who stays and who gets laid off and I will tell you that if there is a dickhead that nobody likes, but they can't get work done without him, they will keep him. Alot of times, it comes down to, can we function without the guy? Managers think about their own job and day to day. So if firing some guy means that he will then have to pick up his slack and stay extra hours, he will find some way to keep the guy.

I guess I should not have used the word "good", I should have said "essential" and so as an employee, you have to make yourself "essential" not just "good".
 
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Edited: Please ignore this really dumb joke that totally flopped; my bad. Only leaving this in so that Alex's response will make sense. Please move on to the rest of the thread.

I thought the snapchat comment above was hilarious, lmao.

You're right though. F*ck 'em and on to the next thing.

I was about to click the Report button on your comment, then I realized that won't do you any good if it's just reported here...
 
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Late Bloomer

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I guess I should not have used the word "good", I should have said "essential" and so as an employee, you have to make yourself "essential" not just "good".

I would completely agree with you on that one. Of course, to managers, all managers are indispensable!
 

AlexLegault

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I was about to click the Report button on your comment, then I realized that won't do you any good if it's just reported here...
I don't understand. You want to report me because I thought your comment was funny?
 
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I don't understand. You want to report me because I thought your comment was funny?

No, when I read how you'd been fired by text message, I thought "he's got to report that to the labor board." And then I saw the Report button, and for a moment was thinking that it should be clicked to make a Report. And then I realized, that won't help you... it would only alert the Forum authorities, not the Labor Department. Sorry, my first dumb joke worked, my second one was not nearly clever enough to be worth the explanation.

Nothing you said here was in any way inappropriate, and nothing you did about how the job ended was inappropriate either. The only actual report that should happen to anyone, is that your bad ex-boss should get his wrist slapped, and you should get all the pay you were promised with whatever contract governed the 30 hour commitment.
 

AlexLegault

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No, when I read how you'd been fired by text message, I thought "he's got to report that to the labor board." And then I saw the Report button, and for a moment was thinking that it should be clicked to make a Report. And then I realized, that won't help you... it would only alert the Forum authorities, not the Labor Department. Sorry, my first dumb joke worked, my second one was not nearly clever enough to be worth the explanation.

Nothing you said here was in any way inappropriate, and nothing you did about how the job ended was inappropriate either. The only actual report that should happen to anyone, is that your bad ex-boss should get his wrist slapped, and you should get all the pay you were promised with whatever contract governed the 30 hour commitment.
Oh sorry I misunderstood that, haha.

In that case then yes, I agree.
 

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