John’s Blog

I had lined up some contract work that was to start this week and run for a couple of months. Now it wasn’t exactly anything amazing, but it was something to keep the cash flowing in while I kept on the job hunt. Unfortunately, the work I had lined up fell through. So instead of returning to New Hampshire and starting a new project today, I am still up here in Maine. Yes, the last month of coming up to visit family and relax was nice, but I am itching to get back to work. The only issue is that the job market around here is horrible to say the least. I am really thinking it is time for us to get out of this area all together.

Well for now I am off to do another job search, then go grab a coffee and some breakfast. Oh, and by the way, if you had considered visiting Maine recently but didn’t. Don’t worry, you haven’t missed much. For the last month pretty much all it has done is rain.

So, as anyone who reads this blog may know, I was laid off from my job on March 30th. (I blogged about it here).

When I was laid off I was told I would be able to return to work when things picked up (in a month or so I was told). But I left with a very weird feeling about the whole thing. I couldn’t shake the feeling something wasn’t right. But I tried to keep as positive of an attitude as possible about the whole situation. I immediately filed for unemployment, and just in case things didn’t turn around looking for work and sending out a few resumes (again just as a precaution).

So far I am still waiting for a determination from unemployment, they are working slow as ever on this, looks like they will take up the entire 21 days the federal government allows them to process the claim. In the meantime I am left waiting and wondering. Unemployment in this state is not great. I will be looking at getting about half of what I was making at work. Which in and of itself is not a rewarding prospect since we were just getting by on that and my wife’s salary. So yes, it is belt tightening time and we are doing so. And it was my sincere hope that before my first check even arrived that I would be called back to work.

Well today I learned that I would surely be getting a check first. Since I got a lovely email from the President of the company. It had no words in the email, just a Microsoft Word attachment. Upon opening and subsequently reading the letter. It informed me that I would not be returning to work for the company. Going on to state some bullshit about how there was not enough business to warrant it. Now in a lot of positions I could understand that train of logic. However, when I was laid off I held the position of General Manager for the company. I drew the second highest salary to the President (and honestly it wasn’t that much). So the reasoning to them is cost savings apparently. But in reading the letter, I also discovered that his son, a person who was brought into the company as a technician, and that I trained, has been promoted.

How can I see this as anything but a cowardly and feeble way of forcing me out of the company so his son can take over? There is no other way to view it. I am sure that from the outside looking in there are ways to spin it. However after being there as long as I did and knowing what I know. It is undeniably what happened.

So here I am, not just laid off, but unemployed. This is the thanks I get for the years I spent turning that company around. When I started the customer base had dwindled due to the types of people that had been employed there in the past. They had driven away customers and clients with poor attitude and customer service. Not to mention shoddy technical work at best. There was no reporting, no tracking, nothing. I came in and changed that. Made sure we hired knowledgeable people who worked hard, services those customers and clients. Ensured that all work we did was done with quality and accuracy in as timely a manner as possible. And you know what? It took about 6 months to see the difference. We had old clients coming back in, and new ones developing all the time. I got out there, advertised, networked, did whatever it took to bring in business. I worked all the time, whether it was from the office or at home, weekends, holidays, you name it. I gave up a lot over those years to make a difference. In the end I did, granted at the time I was “laid off”, things were slow. But that was normal for this time of year at that business. And to be honest compared to years past things were up, even with the shitty economy. Could business have been better? Of course it could. Could it have been worse? Hell yes it could have been. I’d seen the books, and had I not turned things around from day one, I am sure they would have been.

In the end, all my hard work didn’t matter much for me. I had spent my time setting up the boss’s son with the perfect opportunity to make a go of it. And once they had drained all they could out of me, they tossed me out.

Well hopefully on to bigger and better things. I do predict a rough patch ahead for us. Since with the economy being the way it is the job market around here just isn’t what it once was. And decent positions are that much harder to come by.

Well I guess that’s enough of a rant for now. Back to my job search.