Fired for refusing a promotion during a performance review

lifesab-andthenyoudie submitted 605 days ago

I posted this somewhere else, but thought I'd submit it here as an official entry.

Situation: I was working as a Marketing Mangager on a line of specialty dairy products. I had negotiated this postion as a job share--the first of its kind in this company. My job share partner and I divided up the product line, each taking primary responsibility for several products and secondary (backup) responsibility for the other person's products. After 18 months, it was continuing to work beautifully.

So I'm my boss' office undergoing a performance review. The review was stellar. In fact, he told me they liked me so much, they wanted me to step up to the plate full time, and take over the whole section (in effect "demoting" my job share partner). I politely declined as the flexibility of this job was imperative to me. I didn't want to work full time. Also, the commute was up to 2 hours each way in traffic, so being in the office five days a week would have been a nightmare.

In response my boss looks at me and says "well in that case, you might as well clean out your desk and go home". I thought he was joking. It took me a few minutes to realize he was serious. I was completely taken aback. But I recovered enough to keep my wits about me and demand a final check right then and there which was to include vacation, bonus and a healthy severance. It was about 3 hours before HR honored this request and got me the check. In the meantime, a security guard was posted outside my office to make sure I wasn't stealing any proprietary information. Once I got my check, I was escorted out of the building.