How does your company handle eliminating jobs?

I don't even get a severance. Just the promise that my unemployment claim will go through immediately and I won't have to have a hearing to get it. It sucks, but it's one more paycheck, so I'm here.

 

I would like to think that if I was let go and had to work another two weeks that I would have been professional about it.

I'm glad I was never given the chance to find out otherwise.

 

I've been pissing in the coffee. [/OKnotreally,butIreallywantto]

Just found out I do get a severance package. One week's pay for every two full years I've worked here. I'm one month shy of my second year. They're giving me 2 1/2 days pay. Assholes.

 

All too often, unfortunately.

 

That's brutal. Piss in the coffee and stinkpalm everyone in the building before you leave.

 

The place where I got shipped did it in a dignified manner.

I got a call on the phone a day before I was due back into the newsroom. The editor told me that some jobs were cut and mine was one of them.

After a long-ago-scheduled meeting with my regular, full-time employer right after the dreaded call, I went into the newsroom a few hours later to talk to the editor - a class act then and now - and signed a form that allowed me a decent severance in exchange for not suing.

I signed it, not only because my immediate supervisors and newsroom were decent people, but also because it we were at-will employees. Just what was I going to win with litigation?

I said goodbye to my colleagues, and the copy desk chief never lost his sense of humor. I was wearing a hockey sweater and he asked if I was there to fight (funnier part is the sweater was honoring a multi-time winner of the Lady Byng). It was a joke, and badly needed at the time for a lot of people.

I was one of lucky ones, though. First, I was working elsewhere on a full-time basis - and, yes, they knew it as I had the gig when I was hired – and still had a steady paycheck and benefits. I saw the editor a few months later at my full-time gig. We caught up and it wasn't too awkward.

Proof that it wasn't personal: I got a call out of the blue from a paper closer to where I was residing at the time for a job opening. I never sent a resume to them and asked how they got my contact info. They said the paper who cut my job recommended me.

Understand that none of this will help others going through something this awful. I can only hope that some places maintain some semblance of class and dignity under the circumstances.

 

At my first stop, I was clued in when I arrived and my badge didn't work when drove up to the parking lot.

 

I was allowed/asked to finish out the schedule, and then my last night was a Sunday where I was the only person in the building (though my SE did show up to escort me out for the last 15 minutes).

I apparently have a very trustworthy face.

 

Well, I know one place that changed its name about 5 days later ...