Our company with no personal phone calls sent out an email. This is a fidelity Investments owned company so you would expect some level of professionalism…Even the managers were unaware. The telephone call it references started 5 minutes early and the email announcement was sent 15 minutes prior to the call time. Everyone who called in at 11 missed the majority of the 7 minute meeting:

Re: Our Commercial Business

Over the past eighteen months, our commercial business has competed in a staffing industry which has gone through significant strategic and economic changes that have been more rapid and dramatic than we had ever expected. Intensifying pricing pressure, increasing cost of employment related expenses, the need for global capability and accelerating adoption of vendor management technology are fundamentally changing the
way staffing is purchased and managed.

In light of these changes and after careful strategic re-evaluation of the staffing industry we have decided to exit all of our commercial business and focus solely on client Fidelity. This is extremely difficult news to deliver because so many of you have worked very hard,
with measurable success to win and service new commercial clients. As Veritude returns to its roots, the size of the organization will be reduced considerably. Some of these changes will be immediate and others will be over the coming months as we work with our clients to wind down the commercial business. I will be hosting an all-employee meeting today at 11 a.m. to answer your immediate questions.

Additionally, over the next few days, members of the Leadership Team will meet individually with employees across the firm to discuss the reorganization and its various impacts. We will approach this process in an orderly fashion with the clear goal of treating employees, clients and associates fairly and respectfully.

This post was submitted by George Adams.

I took a job with a new company, formed by a couple of private equity interests with parts of an old company. Soon after I started, various warning signs appeared that maybe this wasn’t the ideal job for me, or anybody else, for that matter:

—a few weeks after I started, I was given three more departments to manage, thereby doubling/tripling my workload. This was a classic “bait and switch”….you can’t tell me management didn’t know about this when I went through the interview process only a couple of weeks earlier.

— “old guard” management made it their business to make my daily existence miserable. They did not like the idea of a new position in their company that ate into their “power base”. I was constantly fighting fires for what these folks did with my staff, e.g. hired them, fired them, gave them work to do and never told me, etc. Appeals to my higher ups fell on deaf ears….obviously, they didn’t want to upset the good old boys.

— apparently, the “good ‘ol” way of doing business in this company included a lot of fraud/crime. In the space of six months, I found the following:

— OSHA fraud
— sexual harassment
— software piracy
— workmens compensation fraud
— payroll fraud

again, I reported every instance to the higher ups….no response, other than one instance of the equivalent of a wrist slap.

I could see the writing on the wall…these folks liked to go about business by doing anything and everything they wanted to do; no regards to the right way . “Morally bankrupt” is a term that comes to mind. I started looking for another job early this year.

One day in April, the boss called me into his office, and actually told me to my face that I was “too professional” for the job, and he needed someone who was “loose and accommodating”. It takes a lot of arrogance to say that basically he wanted a crook in my role. I was given 20 minutes to pack/leave, all under the supervision of one of the “old guard”.

Morale of the story: stay the course, and leave folks like this behind…they’ll get theirs, sooner or later.

This post was submitted by Dave.

So my husband and I opened a small construction business in October of 2007, yeah bad timing doesn’t even begin to describe it. We had a booming first year thanks to a few huge projects, however as the economy sank lower and lower our company just wilted. We could never get a small business administration loan because my husband had a record from 17 years ago when he was a teenager, so we used our personal credit borrowed from family…

The banks kept telling us “once your company has been open for 2 years you will have no problem getting a business loan from the bank” So we counted the days and when we had two years in business we showed up with our business plan and loan application in hand and were quickly denied! No one wanted to give us a loan again!

We borrowed we used our own credit and we cut the company down to nothing trying to wait out the recession but finally after not being paid for 6 months straight I had my husband officially let me go just so I could get unemployment.

So now that we have racked up a whopping $175,000.00 in personal loans and credit card debt and we are bringing in a grand total of $1,700.00 a month thanks to the state of Texas unemployment we are faced with not only having to close the company but also follow it up with a super fun personal bankrupts woo hoo!

We gambled and we lost…
Or did we?

Now faced with the aftermath we are considering moving to Bonaire and working on a resort or dive boat, why not our credit is shot for 7 years and we always wanted to run off to a tropical island but we had so much to lose if we did it, now we have nothing to lose!

Hello Sunshine, see you guys in 7 years, hopefully by then the economy will have turned around

This post was submitted by mmj.

I was a manager in our consulting department, part of a large, public, world-wide company build by acquisitions. One year I not only managed 15 people, but also handled a full set of projects, being about 90% billable (goal was 62%). I worked unreimbursed overtime. I earned an award. I was an “investment” employee. My reviews by co-workers were all glowing and high on the number scale. I met all my goals. I took care of little things and big things. I met business internal metrics. Then the economy tanked, and workload suffered, the pipeline dried up, thanks in part to Sales and Marketing folks putting all eggs in one or two baskets and neglecting local markets. Our local office depended on trickle down from a larger office, and we had little local client diversity. Sharing workload between offices quickly dried up along with the economy. My boss, who had enjoyed four years of getting to work late and taking Fridays off because I covered the office, called me in late September 2009 and said I was being laid off. My direct reports wished I stayed and he was let go, but my boss was liked by a regional manager. I had some idea things were heading this way, but surely not me, a person so dedicated to the company, liked by direct reports, and with really good performance. Do I regret not going around my boss and trying to outmaneuver him for the local manager position? I did at first, but then HE got laid off about a month later, and most of the remaining professional folks went part-time and are now being managed by a distant office. The whole thing just went downhill. Other offices have suffered the same fate. So, here I am, over 50, great at what I do, kids in college, and no job yet as of January 2010. I have never been unemployed before and I search every day, looking and networking. My only regret is that I didn’t act sooner to start looking for another job. My suggestion to all – always have a Plan B. Be professional where you work now, do your best, be loyal to yourself, and always be looking.

This post was submitted by Mark.

I arrived at work one morning and my key didn’t work in the lock. I banged on the door, as I could see colleagues inside. No one came to the door. I called from my cellphone and got the owner–”yea, he said, I have made some changes and we don’t need you any more.” That was it, no letter, no severence, nothing.

This post was submitted by John.