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.
When firing employees, it’s best to avoid all discussions. If you give a reason, it opens up a conversation, leading to the employee defending their job performance.
And the more information you give them, the more they have to build a wrongful termination suit around.
So it’s best to say that we’ve made new plans for the good of the company’s future, and you don’t fit into those plans.
You think it’s about you, but it isn’t. You aren’t even human to the people making this decision, you are only a line on a spread sheet, with money attached, and no express job responsibilities. It’s easy to cut a position like that.
I want this to be true but with the “3 days later” thing and the fact they literally had just finished hiring a new 80-90k/y analyst is pretty crazy.
Yeah, but the high paying analyst has an actual, defined job that the University probably required. You were essentially a part-time go-fer. His job is essential, yours was not.
Ok, thanks. Point made :-„
Sorry about you losing your job, but stop beating yourself up that it was your fault. Low level jobs like that dry up all the time.
Things are probably going to be tight in every other department too, so future employment at the college is probably out. Hopefully you can find something at a local business. Don’t wait too long, though, you almost certainly weren’t the only one cut, and they’ll be out looking for jobs, too.