I guess I should've thought something was up when, as I was getting coffee late yesterday morning, my boss walked to the refrigerator with my boss' boss. He then told me that they were cleaning out the fridge, so if I had any creamer in there (I just emptied the last bottle I had in there), take it out by 2 or someone will throw it away. I think he then gave me the peace sign.
Then I looked at his boss because he's been talking to me about stuff the past couple weeks and I thought he wanted something else from me. "No, I'm good," he said.
And that's all I thought about it. I was stressing out all morning about where I was going to work next, because I thought yesterday was my last day, and that anxiety kept me up while I tried to sleep through lunch. But then the hammer came down when I came back.
One of the other two temps still working there told me the news: My boss just got let go.
Then, my ex-boss' boss, who now organizationally is my boss, called me into a meeting room to say that I was going to be extended till at least next week and possibly till Valentine's Day. That's awesome, especially since I called my temp agency over lunch and was told that this lead I was led to believe by my contact was very promising fell through (thanks for calling me back, by the way). I need the work, even if it's only three more days. I just won't do it working below the person who's trained me for this job the past two years.
Understand: I am going to work at this place, as a temp, when my boss isn't. I have "outlived" my boss. Never in my years as a temporary worker have I experienced this. And this is fucked up.
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Being a temp for nearly all of my working life I hate myself for continually not seeing the signs you're getting fired because once it's done, those signs are obvious. My boss's boss bugging me about work? It's for a task that my former boss had control over. Why would my supervisor's supervisor need to even concern himself with that -- unless he's going to fire his underling? And a couple months ago my ex-boss lost control of okaying our timesheets. I only thought of that in passing, and I thought the reason was that either he didn't trust him to OK the temps' wages or that he was told to assume those responsibilities. I forgot, again, that one of the signs you're being fired is you're being stripped of responsibilities.
Earlier this week my former boss came up to us late in the day to lay out what we're going to be doing the next day. He was talking as if he wasn't going to be in the next day, but I thought he was just taking the day off. He had taken some time off here and there this season. "Are you coming in tomorrow?" I asked him. "Lord willin' and the creek don't rise!" he said. So, maybe he knew something. Maybe he saw the signs that I didn't.
He's a good guy. I mean, I complained about him lording the 300 thing all over our heads, but he told us, and he knew, that it's virtually impossible to reach that goal without cutting some corners. Other than that, he is a great guy and was a great boss to work for -- easygoing, patient, funny and accessible. He may have been too easygoing, I don't know, but despite my bitching about expectations on the job, basically since Christmas the stress level has been low. And that's a testament to him.
Beyond it being unfair, and it's totally unfair that he lost his job (this is a non-profit -- what do you care about not losing money?), it's so weird to not only work past my boss, but to teach my current boss how to do the work I'm doing. Shouldn't you be teaching me? And if I'm teaching you, shouldn't I be above you in the organizational chart? But I am. And once I'm done being useful, I will be let go as well.
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Such a fucking raw deal. How in the hell do you fire a guy who's been good to you for so many years? How do you take away a guy's dignity like that? He's got a family -- how is he going to provide for them? What happens if he can't find a job? They're all being taken by robots.
You know, as a temp I've been let go many times. You learn a lot about people by the way they tell you you're being let go. For example, I worked the night shift at Xcel Energy for 2 1/2 years. You'd think I'd built enough goodwill to be told if I was going to be shitcanned. Alas, I left on the last day of the work year after wishing everyone Happy Holidays, and a couple hours later I was told over the phone by my temp agency that I was fired. These people I knew for 30 months and none of them, not one of them, was grown-up enough to tell me to my face that they were terminating me.
On the other hand, for about half a year I worked for this scanning company. The guy who supervised me called me into his cubicle and told me, straight up, man to man, that I was being let go that day. He gave me the option of letting me work the rest of the day. For that, I thanked him. And to this day, I don't think I'm an idiot for appreciating the professional way he told me I lost my job when that woman at Xcel simply delegated firing duties to my temp agency.
Now, was my ex-boss fired unfairly? I don't know. Like I said, I temp for a non-profit. I have no idea how its budget forced them to cut loose my supervisor. And I will say that my former boss and his former boss weren't exactly best friends forever.
Maybe how I feel about whether he was fired "correctly" doesn't come from whether the guy who fired him was being honest (I think they sat down at my former boss' cubicle and my current boss broke the bad news), but what I think about him. From the quick meeting we had, he's ... someone I can work for, at least for two more weeks. He's not as personable, he tossed out a lot of clichés and we didn't understand each other when I explained to him I had a vacation coming up. Simply put, I don't think "warm" when it comes to him.
I'm just not sure he's a dick either, as some of the former temps think. I don't know, I fist-bumped him once. This new situation might not change things because, beyond this thing I need to teach him, he has a lot on his plate already, moreso now that his employee is gone. I think he's going to be running around like a chicken with its head cut off, and that means he won't have time to peer over my shoulder, noticing that I'm filling up my day cleaning my desk and taping up broken folders.
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Whatever. I'm a temp. Like I told the temps and the woman who's been feeding us work (someone we'll have to work a lot closer with now) when we had a meeting shortly after the shit went down, I had to worry about me.
Then we got to talking, almost philosophically, about the nature of changing jobs. This woman quit her last job because she couldn't handle the workload. I told them about Xcel. The point I was trying to make in our powwow was, What is stability in this life? It is extremely unfair that he lost his job. That afternoon, when he was escorted out the door by his supervisor, he had to be thinking about what he was going to do next. He just had his life, his stability, taken away from him.
I don't want to say he was lulled into a false sense of security. Every person on this planet deserves to feel a genuine sense of security. But that's not the world we live in. And then a thought I've had in the back of my mind made its occasional jaunt to the front of my mind: I think days like yesterday are why I'm a temp. There is no stability as a contract worker, but when you work like a contract worker, you can't ever forget that. You kind of know that the end is near, regardless of when exactly it happens or the manner in which you're told. You just know in the back of your mind that that day can come at any moment, and that such a blindside can happen because you're a temp, and you have accepted that role and fate, and you move on. You're kind of always tethered to the bottom as a temp. But when you're a full-time worker and then you're fired, you fall from where you are and hit that bottom, hard. Is that worse? I think I've decided that the answer to that question is yes, and that I committed to that answer a long time ago, and that's why I have worked temporarily nearly all my adult life. It may be a sad way to live, but at least I know I'll never lose touch with our harsh reality, our unfair existence, this way.
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For the rest of the day the office was subdued. People were talking in whispers, as if we were at a wake, because we kind of were.
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