You Can't Quit, You're Fired!

The good news is, I got a new job. It's just doing the same thing I've been doing for another mortgage company, for not much more money at all and a further drive. I applied at several places and these kind folks saw my potential (or at least my past) and offered me a job. I could see the writing on the wall at my old job. The corporate owners are running the place into the ground and I will be majorly surprised if there's even an Austin location by the end of the year. I had to think defensively and get out of there before I showed up for work one day and the doors were locked.....

So to put a long story short, I typed up my two week notice to give to my boss, the man who hired me three and a half years ago. I wasn't feeling particularly excited or "neener neener, I've got a new job" because I didn't get either of the jobs I really wanted. I felt like I had to settle. Anyway, my boss knew that I had been looking for another job and I used him for a reference, so it wasn't a total surprise on his part. He's a good man and I count him as a friend. I gave him my notice and he congratulated me, gave me some well-needed advice, asked that I would spend my last 2 weeks teaching a couple of my co-workers how to do what I did, which I pretty much had to train myself to do. I assured him that I would and I went back to work.

Five o'clock rolls around (did I mention this was Friday the 13th?) and my boss asks me to come to his office. I go in and sit down, noticing uneasily the tight set to his jaw. "Uh oh, what have I done wrong?", I think. He says that his boss, one of the assholes from New York who came in last year and supposedly "rescued" the company, has told him to inform me that my services "are no longer required, effective immediately".

I must admit, after being initially stunned, I did get upset. I mean, I did already tell them that I was leaving and I had another job lined up, but I felt that I was being discarded, like my over 3 years of service was worth nothing to these idiots. It wasn't. The only person my service mattered to was in the office with me, and he seemed to be having a difficult time telling me. Maybe he wasn't, but when I was at my desk, blubbering like an baby and gathering my stuff into a box, surrounded by my co-workers who were trying to convince me that this was business as usual in the world of finance, he came up to me, pressed a $20 into my palm and told me to share a bottle of wine with my husband that night and that he was sorry.

I wasn't supposed to start my new job until July 30th, but I'll have to call my new boss tomorrow and see if they need me immediately, because I can't afford a 2 week vacation, no matter how much I'd like to take one.