Here's hoping your unemployment runs out before the checks do.

 Well that sucks AIGS, guess you should have quit a day earlier. It is always more satisfying to quit than to be fired. I hope you can turn this into an opportunity to do something you enjoy more. 

Hope for the best for you dude. There is no shame in an honest job. I hope you find something soon. It could be worse. You could have my face.

hope you find something better this time. Balls to work you hate. Life being too short, and all that. I've done 18 months unemployed in the past so I know this can be unsettling.

For me it was a forced redirection after a long period on that path of least resistance. And ultimately it was much for the best. 

Sorry to hear that.

 Well, I had my unemployment hearing this morning. Officially, they don't have to tell me anything else for ten days. However, my ex-ceo's performance in the hearing was so completely off the wall that the hearing officer told me that my benefits are going to go through automatically. Yay me!

It sux to be doing something you don't enjoy, I'm sure it will work out for the best.

 Well, if you want to contest my unemployment insurance, then not lying to the hearing officer would be a good thing to try.

Her: It came up in his annual review that he is a bad worker.

-->I don't know, I have been there across four decades.

Me: Well, I have not had an annual review for several years.

Hearing officer: Is this true?

Her: Well, I only joined the company a few months ago but from what I see, it has been at least two years since anyone has had an annual review.

Me: well, umm,

Hearing officer: so you don't do annual reviews?

→ well it has been something around five years since I had an annual review. In all fairness, I did once get a verbal warning because I did not vacuum the office before I left for the night. It has been vacuumed every night since then. Well, except for the nights I was not supposed to be there. All other nights, I found that nobody feels the need to vacuum if I am not there.

So no, the only feedback that I have had for several years is from my direct supervisor who happens to be a former army drill sergeant. I don't claim to have never messed up but he would tell me what was wrong instantly and I would deal with it.

Good Luck AIGS. I have been fired a time or two in my life for nonsense and I still haven't gotten over it.

I am off work right now, but that is due to the fact that I am on crutches and have a freakin' cast on my leg that I can not wait to cut off.

But with your experience and longevity with one company, you won't have any trouble finding another job. Good luck.

 Dude, do not cut the cast off. I did that many years ago and I am now stuck with knees that are twenty years older than the rest of me. I can't say the keeping that cast on will help but I can sympathize. Getting back to business was a bad idea.

Oh! it was epic fail BTW. I don't know how accurate bicycle computers are but I was downhilling at over 50 MPH when the shit went down. The injury can only happen if you land feet first so I must have done a full flip. The only thing that I know with clarity is “shit, I can't get around or over that rock” followed by regaining consciousness.   

I can see the injustice of your situation there, AiG.

Me, I went straight from University to a Job that lasted nearly 40 years until the position disappeared from under me in a major reorg, where I could have chosen to re-apply for a new job in a spun-off entity.

I decided to go with employment with smaller employers, based on getting having got useful work with a couple, but who then either sold out to bigger companies, or the boss died (that happened twice)....

So I have never had the experience of being fired, altho it has been a bit galling to see someone else make more money than I got from work I did (programming). in at least two instances. Fortunately, in the more annoying instance, that guy has since become a good friend, and financially assisted me to a substantial degree in recent times. He also happens to now be a strong and active atheist - the issue never came up in my earlier association with him.

So, yeah, life can suck, in different ways, and sometimes you can recover.. I am now getting full age-based social -security payments, while working with a few other people to get back into a better financial position. I spent all my super on survival in the worst years.

Hope you manage to get thru it.

I have an update. I went to the first session with my local employment office today. It turned out to be a group session on “job seeking skills”. I turned up 15 minutes early just because that seemed prudent.

Well a few minutes after I got there, who should walk in and randomly sit down next to me but the woman who sat next to me for the past several years! Yikes!

In talking with her, I found out that not only was she fired for the same stated reason as me but there is a third person who also got the ax. It seems that they are firing a person a week right now.

I think that I would have felt better if they had just said that they were downsizing but as we have seen, they don't seem to be willing to do that.

Even better, when I got to the one on one part of the process, the guy said that he was sorry to hear that I was part of the {company name} thing. So they are aware of what id going on.

I think that tomorrow or the day after, I am going to hit up the local musician's store. I have a couple of unspent gift cards that I need to burn off anyway so that is my chance to get in with the manager who already knows me fairly well. The case that I can make is all the time that I have in the pits of hell getting people to say “yes” when they were not sure or even resistant to that much. I might make a good salesman.

The firings will continue until morale improves!  Up here we have something called wrongful dismissal, where if they cannot make a clear case for your dismissal you are entitled to some compensation.  I'm not sure what the law is down in the US of A, but it feels as though something similar should be in place.

No such thing.  In most states, you can be employed "at will" which means you are out the door for no reason at any time.  And don't let someone try to tell you they fire only the dead wood. 

I think he's talking about Canada. In fact, I'm almost positive. However, without specifics of compensation, it's doubtful that is enough deterrent from creating a few Canadian workplace patsies every now and then. My guess is that the same thing would have happened had AiGS had been two or three-hundred miles north with the same workplace situation, he'd merely have a little extra money in his pocket for being put through the same BS. And in today's job market, anything short of '100% salary compensation for a few months*' is going to be much help. He still faces foreclosure, one or more household utilities fucking up with zero options for repair except DIY in the mean time while seeking re-employment, cat can't be fed canned food that he likes so much -along with a constrictive cutback on various other luxuries, and AiGS may even have to call on some old favors before everything's done with.

It's a potential peril we all face nowadays.

*I somehow doubt that exists anywhere... but I might be wrong.

You're right it is for Canada.  Our company is federally regulated, non unionized and I know of a few cases where they got up to 3 weeks per year of employment due to silly stuff like contracts not being air-tight.  

http://zvulony.ca/2010/articles/employment-law/what-is-wrongful-dismissal/

Yes, he is talking about Canada, yes, I am talking about the US.  I was commenting that in the US, being fired "for cause" was not mandated in most states and it seems most of them instead have "at will".  And so the circumstances under which you qualify for unemployment benefits varies by state and whether you have a contract with your employer.  (Not necessarily unionized as top managers and sports players often have contracts as well.)  It can be confusing. 

My experience - as a manager - with "at will" or "for cause" law is from working in a couple of states and in no way is meant to be representative of AIGS' situation.  So my point was that US laws are generally nothing like Canadian law - obvious to you and me, perhaps, but not to other people - and that the laws vary by state.

US federal law only explicitly requires that a state have some sort of unemployment compensation and some sort of standards for awarding the compensation.  Whether there is anything about advance notification or severance pay is also up to each state.  When I was laid off, I got no notice, 2 weeks pay and a severance bonus.  I thought this was generous since many places would not have given a severance bonus for a non-managerial techie.  (No, I was not a manager in my last position, it was the one before that where I was a supervisor.) 

http://www.ehow.com/facts_5619109_federal-insurance-laws-quitting-job.html

The company once had an office in France.  Then the project was completed and the workers no longer required.  In the US, they would have been out the door.  In France, the employer must continue to employ the person until they find another job.  No unemployment insurance at all.  Many people in my company were very upset about this.  The project managers, the department managers, all thought it was a rip off.  From the point of view of a worker bee, it sounded pretty good. 

My only point with all of this rambling, is that you should know the employment laws that affect you.  Yes, none of this helps pay the mortgage.  I do wish the best for AiGS and hope his involuntary vacation is short.

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Well, it is not that bad kapkao.

Between pay already owed, vacation not taken and severance, I got a decent chunk of cash dropped on me. From living frugally for the past month, I have not even been to the bank yet. That and I am getting something like 80% of my income for the next six months. If I do this right, come xmas, I might actually have a crap load of cash in the bank. Which I fully expect to need because in this economy, I don't have any expectations that I will be back in the saddle by then.

Also, I qualify for USD $3,000 in retraining costs and I am still eligible for a Pell Grant. That and if I am understanding things right, I may be able to extend my unemployment if I am in school.

I think that I already said that I met with an employment guy from the state the other day. His first idea is to do a resume for maintenance but that is a job for anyone who can hold a rag and will not pay much.

When I go back to see him, I intend to discuss my actual skill set. Really, I have spent my whole life dealing with people. That is what I can do and very well thank you.

I might make a killer salesman (no used cars though, I would have to sell my soul to do that). I might be a great librarian. Something like that.

I also build my own computers. Most of those jobs are in small shops that may well be family owned but I can't pass up whatever comes my way. Actually, I am a fairly hard core overclocker who can build a $500 computer that can outperform something from Dell that costs 50% more. I would need to spend some of my retraining cash to get the certs for that but still...

At least you don't have to deal with that shit anymore. Good luck finding something better.

So true. More and more in this country the workers have no rights. We are regressing back to the days before WW2.

They don't just fire the dead wood.

I just thought of a scene in Shindler's List.

There was a scene in the movie at the concentration camp where a Jewish woman warned the Germans building a compound, because she was an architect, that they were building the foundation wrong. The guard thanked her for the advice, and then shot her in the head, then told the German workers to correct the mistake.

Skipping human history when you boil it all down, it all amounts to evolution. DO NOT CHALLENGE THE ALPHA MALE.

In my work history I have been fired for no reason and have seen plenty of people I knew did a great job fired. The ego of the owner of a business trumps any rightful objection a worker might have.

Glad to hear it...

Errr... what the hell. Everyone's eligible  for pell grants, at least based on what I'm told. Unlike the fringe benefits mentioned already, you have to pay the grants back. It isn't that much of a boon.

Yeah, mentally imbalanced people.

You are certainly hardcore about your gear, the way I would imagine some people are hardcore about Harley-Davidsons and antique cars.

Of course, anyone with a modicum of analytical intelligence can do that. Dell's pretty easy to top.

You need certifications to put computers together for other people? Ok, that part I didn't know about. Please, tell me more.

You mean like with the Radium Girls? Oh yes, most certainly. Tell me, what exactly was the record for worker's rights from 1945-1963?

Yay me!

I found three jobs in driving distance that I can do.  They all pay 3x to 6x what my last job did.

As long as they don't require knee pads and a pimp go for it! Congratulations!

 Good luck with the interviewing. (I would suggest forgoing the kilt during interviews)

Here's hoping you get one of them.

Had a phone interview today.  Pay isn't what I was making, only part time.  But they make and sell hand make chocolates.  mmmm..... the perks, the perks.