Thursday, March 13, 2008

Crying, Waiting, Hoping

I don't know what to say.

RedFaery is meeting with her temp agency rep after work tomorrow at his request. She fears the worst - that the place she is contracted to work is going to end the contract. Which means unemployment.

And I have no encouraging words for her, because I think she's right.

Drawing upon my own experiences, her past employment experiences, and heck, even my dad's recent job changes, the signs are all there.

1. New company president, needing to make a quick profit to please shareholders.
2. She's personally witnessed many terminations of "unneeded personal" because of her position in managing e-mail accounts.
3. A co-worker, who had been "contract labor" also for about 18 months longer than promised finally got officially hired - which I'm sure put a crimp on the department's budget.
4. Contract labor is always the first to go in a recession, which we are heading back into, and/or a "contraction" which the company is obviously experiencing.
5. Her supervisor at work asked her, and only her, to go to lunch tomorrow (a Friday - the day most people statistically are "let go"). Think of Jerry Maguire.
6. Her temp agency rep doesn't do the "let's get together" thing unless he's got something important to discuss. Plus he made himself unavailable for questions until the time of the meeting.

The ONLY thing I can think to mention is that I truly believe that her fear of being fired for being sick too often is not the reason. It could be a factor in deciding between her and another contractor that just started there at most. But I think even he will be let go for the first four reasons I listed above.

RedFaery's been let down by company after company all her life - she busts her hump to prove herself with no good results in the end.

Keep her in your thoughts, and pray that we are both wrong.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bummer.

Fingers crossed...
---your sis

ActingUpAgain said...

Small update: I was wrong about #5 - it's a co-worker she's going to lunch with. She's asking her for a reference.

RedFaery told the agency rep by e-mail she'd not be available to come buy (and spend gas to get there), and the rep wrote back 20 minutes later (you know, the rep that wouldn't be available?) to say he'd give her a call, even though he "doesn't like to do it over the phone". Yep, we're right.

I'm proud of her. She's already put out a call to another agency that told her earlier this week "if you're ever avaiable", and cleaned out her work area except for a couple of things she'll be able to carry out tonight. Plus she's gone in today with head held high.

ActingUpAgain said...

Another update: after leaving for the day, RedFaery tried to access her e-mail from home, and the account was disabled. One of her jobs at work was to diable e-mail accounts of terminated employees, so there you go!

After a brief cat-and-mouse game of talking to the temp agent by e-mail and being constantly put off, she said "just officially tell me I was released so I can get on with my life". Atta girl!