New story: Fired...TWICE!

simplyfiredstories submitted 471 days ago

In 2001, just as a contract/project wound down, I was laid off from a contracting firm which "could not find additional projects" for my skills.
After 9/11 events, I finally landed a phone interview which led to face-to-face with requisite plane flight (one week after the Towers). Excited I got the new job in October 2001 and started work. In two weeks after my start date, I received notice that I could return to Delaware and pack rest of my apartment for move to Georgia. Prior to my departure on Thursday's US Airways flight back to Philadelphia, the entire I/T department was assembled in a conference called by the CIO of my new employer. In short order, we were told that effective Dec.
29, 2001, all positions were being outsourced to xxx.
I was game for the adventure--now up for the challenge of learning two organizations--the prior employer and the new vendor organization.

All seemed to be going well--I even postponed taking extreme lengths of vacation time and even worked over July 4th holiday to support application systems for accounting function. Near the end of 2002, I negotiated a 4-day weekend to include Christmas holidays with my return to work on Jan 2nd. When I arrived in town on Monday, I received a phone call to please come into the office. I returned the phone call of this "mystery person" and dropped my chores and returned to the office. After wandering down the halls and corridors, I noticed that the network admins were hanging around and that the xxx H/R rep was "in town". After thirty minutes I was hauled into the office and told, "there's good news and bad news--what do you want, first?" I demanded the good news. I was told, "well, effective Dec 29th, your position has been eliminated."

Despite promises to find comparable positions around xxx, the H/R and "workflow coordinator" did not bring about any magical positions. But, a number of xxx staffers around the organization worked diligently to position me with their Federal divisions, and prior to xxx's acquisition, I nearly landed a post with them. Most of these promising options shriveled as managers waffled or resources changed their minds about leaving.

Seven months later in 2003, I landed another post paying lower wages and greater process-orientation. I mulled entering medical, engineering or pharmacy school after this highly stressful series of most-unfortunate-events..