Fired for working

Rumrunner submitted 606 days ago

I was laid off from a job I'd held for over 11 years. My supervisor informed me that there was going to be a department wide 10% layoff, and that I had been selected as one of the people to go. I asked her if there was any particular reason I was selected over others with less seniority. I was told that a vice-president had walked by my cubicle while I was working, and noticed that several people were gathered outside of my cube talking (while I was busy working in my cube). The VP said that he thought my cube was an 'attractive nuisance' and was generally a hinderance to the entire department (but then again, it could be the coffee pot which was located next to my cube...maybe the coffee pot should have been canned as an 'attractive nuisance'?). He said that he'd noticed people outside of my cubicle on other occasions as well.

As one of the most senior computer programmers in the company, there were people in and out of my cube asking for technical help on a regular basis. If there was anything 'attractive' about my cubicle, it was because it was somewhere my co-workers could come to for help with computer code (Well, that and the coffee pot next door. A computer programmer is a device that turns coffee into code).

My supervisor and I had worked together for years, and she started crying during my exit interview (which means I was having to comfort her over my firing. If this whole thing looks like something out of 'Office Space', that's exactly what I thought when I saw the movie years later, they could have put my story in there for a comic sight gag). I later found out that the VP in question was fired for gross incompetence (my karma must have run over his dogma...I actually laughed out loud when I heard the news). I still refer to this as the time I was fired for working instead of slacking.

I had always gotten 'distinguished' job reviews in my 11 years at this company under several different supervisors, but one wacky VP who I barely knew made the decision to fire me based on a casual view of me at work. After that, I referred to him as the VP that had been educated far in excess of his intelligence (but I'm not bitter, honest I'm not...right?).