Fired because the interim office sucked

wouter submitted 520 days ago

A few years ago, I was doing a summer job through an interim office. At the time, the policy was that you'd get a one-week contract, and if they liked you, your name would be on a piece of paper they hung out, announcing who could come back and who couldn't. This was in a factory where glue was being packed, which is pretty dull band-work, but requires you to be concentrating quite a bit.

The first week I got there, I was hired through one specific interim office. However, this specific interim office had sent quite some people that weren't doing their job properly, until at one point the hot-shot managers of that company were unhappy with them and decided to go elsewhere if they needed more people. The second interim office they contacted heard the story they had had with the first, so they made sure the people who got through them were up to the job -- they had to do a test before they could get hired.

Naturally, the result was that the hot-shot managers were way more happy with the new people coming from the old office, which is understandable. The switch from the first office to the second happened during the weekend after my first week.

As it happened, because I was no longer a minor, they had given me a few people that I had to lead (and that were minors). During the second week, I was working together with a girl who had gotten hired through the other office; and on Thursday of that week, I was told by the floor manager (who actually got on the factory floor, making sure everything went on as was supposed to) that she'd heard me and that girl were doing such a great job. That evening, I received a phone call from another interim office; they were looking for someone to do some bookkeeping somewhere, which required the secondary school diploma that I had. I declined, because I figured if they were this happy they wouldn't fire me very soon, and I actually quite liked the job.

The very next day, they hung out that piece of paper and I found I wasn't on the list anymore... some number pusher somewhere had apparently decided that those people who were hired through that first interim office were all to be laid off, and he hadn't even contacted the floor manager to see whether his assumption that all people from that office sucked was right.

Needless to say, I was outraged. And of course that one job was gone by then...