Proud of Myself

A month ago I was pink-sliped after 21 years of service. My last day is the 29^th. The lay-off is not for performance reasons; it’s a budget issue, and the dumb-ass director thought it was easiest to axe the lowest-paying position. But they’re not getting rid of the job itself ~ another support person whose title is a level up will replace me, and we all know she is going to fail (even herself).



Today my supervisor asked me to give her a list of my job duties (which she should have in her files). But then she told me to set aside time for me to ‘train’ Susie at my desk. That did it. I said, “You expect ME to train the person who’s going to take MY job???? Are you shitting me?” She looked at me in shock and said “somebody has to do it” then proceeded to yell that if I didn’t want to train Susie then fine, but to still give her that list of duties, then she stormed off like a crazed rhino.



Was proud of myself. That was the closest I ever told my immediate supervisor to go fuck herself. Assuming that a pink-slipped person should train the replacement is the ultimate insult. What happens starting July is not going to be MY problem!

I'm sorry Bluesmama. I've never been at a place that long but I know how getting laid off sucks. Unfortunately it's not really surprising the gaul some people have.

Good for you! I had a job once where I was in line for a promotion that I had worked long and hard for. I was the most senior person with the most experience and it was practically a shoo-in according to my office manager.

Then the management changed. The supervisor had hired a friend about six months before. She wanted to give the job I had worked so hard for to this friend with only the six months experience. I of course objected. She told me her friend needed the job because she was getting a divorce and needed the increase in salary that would come with it. I told her that was not what a promotion should be based on.

Anyway, her friend got the job and I was asked to train her for the higher position I was cheated out of. I told the supervisor I wouldn't and I didn't. So her buddy just stumbled along trying to make it up as she went along.

Sometimes you just have to stand up for what is right.

good for you... and i totally understand!

I was a manager for eckerd drugs and was training a woman to be a manager in another store. I had a miscarriage and took 3 wks off just cause i was so depressed and not "with it". My boss said it was okay, and that the woman was trained sufficiently enough to deal with my store, and she had the support of the Asst manager. When i returned to work, the woman told me "this isnt your store anymore... call scott". I was livid! I was told that if i wanted to keep my job that i would have to take the store she was supposed to go to--- 60 miles away!!! It was ridiculous! She actually lived close to the other store!

I threw the store keys in the guy's face... and left.

So i totally understand how you feel.

Good for you, Blues. They were asking too much and I am so glad you didn't just comply with that ridiculousness.

Gotta love the work-world. . . . we're in a staffing shortage right now, due to a change in management, that isn't for the better, that has caused some good employees to quit, and have fired others. So now, the rest of us are being mandated to take up the slack, and they're forcing people to work 11-7 to cover the shifts that are open. They assigned me 3 in a row in July, after I have made it known that I cannot do an overnight shift because it makes me physically ill, and causes my lymphadema to kick in, where my right arm and hand swells up and I have limited use of it.

I got a doctor's note from the Cancer Center out as Mass General, yesterday, and dropped it off at the employee health department at work, and they took care of dealing with the management in the lab. Now they removed the 11-7's off my schedule, and pretty much can't touch me when they decide to kick in the hospital policy of mandating people to work other shifts in times of shortage. Not a word was said to me, no email, nothing, but now the proverbial white elephant is in the room. .. .

That's ok, if they want to steam-roll the place and shoot from the gun turret, they'll eventually realize that if you shoot enough of your employees, there won't be anyone left but them.

Good Luck BM you did the right thing. I would have loved to see your boss's face LOL.

About the only way I would ever train my replacement was if they stabbed me in the back to take my job.

Good Job!!

Hyacinth Girl wrote:Gotta love the work-world. . . . we're in a staffing shortage right now, due to a change in management, that isn't for the better, that has caused some good employees to quit, and have fired others. So now, the rest of us are being mandated to take up the slack, and they're forcing people to work 11-7 to cover the shifts that are open. They assigned me 3 in a row in July, after I have made it known that I cannot do an overnight shift because it makes me physically ill, and causes my lymphadema to kick in, where my right arm and hand swells up and I have limited use of it.

I got a doctor's note from the Cancer Center out as Mass General, yesterday, and dropped it off at the employee health department at work, and they took care of dealing with the management in the lab. Now they removed the 11-7's off my schedule, and pretty much can't touch me when they decide to kick in the hospital policy of mandating people to work other shifts in times of shortage. Not a word was said to me, no email, nothing, but now the proverbial white elephant is in the room. .. .

That's ok, if they want to steam-roll the place and shoot from the gun turret, they'll eventually realize that if you shoot enough of your employees, there won't be anyone left but them.

My work makes things soooo difficult for people with illness. In 2005 I was in the hospital for several weeks, and when the social worker in the hospital called my work to provide documentation, he was given the run around. Eventually, after my signing 3 different HIPAA forms to various supervisors, a "higher up" boss finally got on the phone. After receiving the documentation, he requested to take to me on the phone and immediately said, "Dont ever bother me with such f---ing petty bullshit again!" and hung up on me. Because my time in the hospital and after care exceeded the FLMA time limits, I was eventually fired, because they claimed they never received the documentation from the hospital! jerk! Too me forever to prove my case and get my job back...

NOW... since my car accident in Feb, I have been harassed by upper upper management about my extended leave from work. Work claimed that they did not like the answers teh hospital doctor provided, and when i asked the hospital to re-complete them, they told me no. I wound up having to mail work the hospital bills which were in the tens of thousands of dollars, and told them if they still had questions, they should write my congressman! lol

What's too common is that too many managers have no clue to the 'real world' below them ~ what their people even do, and micro-managers are among the worst. They live in their perfection-obsessive cubicle minds with no inkling of reality, and often you can't reason with them. One of the best managers where I work is one of those few who rolls up his sleeves and steps up to the plate when help is needed, and he wears many hats. He knows what his people do and he stands up for them. Unfortunately, most aren't like him.

W2l, you have a union, right? People can say all they want about unions, but I know that your employer shouldn't get away with that crap they're trying to pull. They're riding on thin ice. In fact, what you described sounds a lot like the crap that many insurance companies like to do.

Hyacinth, the department I work in has been going through some big, suspicious changes. Lots of inequity in the work place, and I suspect mishandling of money. I've a hunch that something is coming down the pike ~ don't know what. But I've never seen such low morale among the mass of the employees like it is now.

Shale, Oregon is a "work at will" state, too. And the job economy is so bad here. I think what really worries me about our age group is the push, push, push to keep us all working a lot longer, all because the US failed to plan ahead for all us Baby Boomers on the horizon. But, how does this work in a nation that does not like to employ older workers? Makes me mad.

Blues and WTL--yes, I agree--there's lots of doings behind closed doors that doesn't feel pleasant. Others where I work, feel it too--like something's brewing and it ain't good.

Part of it where I am, is that we just had a shift in management, where everyone already in management moved up a level, leaving open the Core Lab supervisor job. I helped create that job way back when, have done it in times of no supervisor being in it, and have also gotten passed over for getting it permanently myself, 3 times over the years in addition to once for another supervisor job. That's 4 times getting shot down in the 25 years I've been in the lab--I get the hint that they don't want me in a position of power, probably because I'm not their friend, 100% of the time, will only ass-kiss 70% of the time, and will actually make changes and make people do their jobs.

That said, I didn't even try for the open position this time around, becaue I probed the management and basically found out that I would not be their first choice. I've watched them groom another girl for it, these past few years, and they even changed the job description from 5 years lab tech experience to 3 years, so this person could apply for it and they could slide her in, which they did.

It's all politics and favoritism where I am, and they're drawing these lines of division that are causing people to quit, or they're firing others, then making the rest of us pick up the slack. Problem is, is that there's only a small group of people they can pull from to force to work the 11-7 shift, because some in the lab are just so special, that they only know how to work in one department, and those departments in question are not open after 3:30pm, so these fine women are exempt from having to help out, because they aren't trained how to.

So that creates more division among the ranks, knowing that they won't even force these people to cross train, but keep picking on the one group that can function in all areas of the lab. That's why I got the doctor's note in place--I'm tired of constantly having to pay for bad management decisions, and be the whipping post for someone else's poor work attitude, or whatever the case may be. Fuck 'em. Now they can't touch me and it buys me time for a couple more years until my daughter graduates high school, and I can look at a major career change.

For now, I've taken the teaching job to do during the days--gives another good thing to put on my resume, I can help save a dying lab program at the college, and I can also mold the students to be able to handle what's coming for them, before my work place gets ahold of them and runs them through the wringer, and kills their enthusiasm, because we're one of the sites that takes the students for their clinical rotations.

They don't want me in management, well, I'll make changes by coming in the back door and get to the students before they do, and show them how to survive.