About 20 minutes ago I got off the phone with my department manager and was told my services are no longer needed. My department head said he wasn’t at liberty to discuss the reason why. I’m an at-will part-time employee for a university and do it as part of my classes. I’ve been working here for about 5 months and my relationships with everyone has been mostly positive, not super outspoken either.
This week I did some brief work in the PD office and must’ve been recognized by someone there. That person likely told the department manager what my past was and a few days later they decided to fire me. This comes only *three days after that, after many months without problems. So: I was suspended from school a few years ago due to legal charges against me, but it was ultimately stripped from my academic record and since I was a youthful offender it was also stripped from the legal record. My parents made sure of it. In court the charges were dropped to an offense (jaywalking) due to plea deal. I was never convicted. However, NONE of this should have been brought up since it is under a sealed record.
I genuinely doubt this is due to my performance at work. We’re somewhat overstaffed and a lot of my tickets are completed in a timely manner. Most of my coworkers like me and it’s not like I’ve stolen anything at work or crashed any company vehicles.
I fucking regret thinking a few years would separate me from my past actions. I thought I was able to move on and grow as a person but it finally caught up. I also wish this was because of funding or whatnot but I kept getting the “I’m not at liberty to say.” So I have to assume it’s because of my past.
Sorry for the paragraphs but I just needed to vent. This is the second time this has happened to me (first being the suspension) and I was actually relying on this job for the summer —i have no summer job lined up.
One of my best friends works for a language program at one of our large colleges/universities… The money and funding situations our educational institutions are under right now is abysmal. They’ve almost lost their job multiple times the last two years due to lack of money for programs like theirs. Each time they were briefly saved by their program being absorbed into another department or shuffling them around… And it’s pretty much happened again - unless there’s any big changes, their program is going to be cut and the few remaining people are going to be unemployed. The thing that has been most frustrating is the giant disconnect between leadership and what these various programs actually do. Old information is being handed around as current, people who aren’t even part of these programs are the ones representing them, and everyone at every level seems incredibly disorganized… All that said, your past may have nothing to do with your removal.
I’m sorry you weren’t provided any closure as to why you were let go :( and I’m even more sorry you’re now in a situation with so much financial burden. I would try not making assumptions… creating narratives that you can’t verify will cause you to spiral 🩷