This makes about the 4th time in the past 30 years, that I have come back from a vacation only to have BAD news waiting on me.
This time, when I got to my emails from work, I found the one “standby”. That usually only means one of two things. 1. You’re being cut 2. You’re being moved.
This time it was “we are making a lot of changes and you don’t need to come back”. That was about the meat of it, although there was a lot of other words said that is all I caught. This time I had actually expected it for some months as we ended the current contract, I had prepared material for the next but it was not at a point to work out any details for a new contract and it would take maybe 6 months to get to that point. I don’t really think that I am as upset or “burnt” this time as I was the last time they cut me loose. Since I expected this I had been mentally preparing for some time. Financially, I am not as prepared but much better than before. I had hoped to get to a point that I would not have to work at anything when they cut me again, knowing that they would, but I am not there yet.
When you are older and higher paid you get cut first and they say there is no AGE discrimination but that is a crock of crap. Three friends of mine were cut recently from the same location – two of them got right back on as consultants but the issues was age. The company didn’t fight at all against the in country requirement of retirement at 60. Algerian law requires retirement at 60 but many Algerians work up to about 62 then go to work for outside companies that generally do not have to follow that rule but we have fallen in place and are dumping experience. Actually it is a convenient way for the company to reduce payroll by swapping out old for new.
I got my call late in the afternoon but I had known what the email meant so I had not made my trip to get supplies for the return trip. I was ready but holding off with anticipation.
Back in 2002 I got about the same thing, I had asked to be off on a particular day and my boss said, no I needed to be there that day – warning #1. I was in that day but nothing was happening that morning, so I went and asked and he said that the manager from Houston was in and had a phone conference but once that was done he needed to talk to me. They made me wait nearly all day and at about 3pm they told me “they didn’t need specialist anymore – they would hire consultants for the needs I was working on” and escorted me out the door. That one hit like a ton of bricks, even though I suspected it was coming it really hurt that time. Fortunately I was called by another group, same company, about 2 weeks later to do the overseas job and that lasted 9 years – needed one more to get really close to fiscally safe.
The two occasions before that were actually only one year apart. Back in 1990, we come back from an August trip to the mountains and we hadn’t been in the house for more than an hour and we got a phone call from a Real Estate Lady wanting to list our house? For what? I called my boss to ask if there was something I should know and he said that the company had decided to close our facility and most of us were moving to Pampa from Perryton. He also stated that I was one of those to work out of Pampa but would maintain the Perryton area as my service site and come to the Pampa office as often as needed to conduct business.
That worked out ok but I still had my house listed for sale but with the collapse of the oil business and the total move of our group out there were way too many houses for sale and mine was just setting – not even showing enough to warrant having it listed? I put up with that for a year and did way too much windshield time during that year as I worked now a triple size area and my office was 70 miles away. I got a new company car in June before all that and by August the next year it had over 70,000 miles on it. We survived and things worked ok but the very next August we get back from a trip to Colorado and I get a call about 2 hours later. How the Hell do they know when I was coming and going? That time I was told I needed to be in Duncan the next day. I said I just got back and needed to get some clean clothes and stuff and what was I going for. The answer – your moving, it is your new work station.
I talked them into a day allowance to let me get stuff packed to stay a few weeks and that was how I transferred to Duncan. Another great situation. I won’t go into my living in a camp trailer there through the winter because we still could not sell the house as that is another story.