Just found this on-line...One of my very first jobs was when I lived in Wickford, Essex in 1969. There was a small company of glass-ware manufacturers just along from where we lived. They had a sign outside asking for "trainee glass blowers". They made scientific glassware such as test tubes and the like. I applied and was shown how to make a test tube and told that any rejects should be thrown into a tea chest at the side of my work bench. At the end of the first day, I had a full tea chest of broken glass and about a dozen half decent test tubes in a box on my bench. They persevered with my efforts until the end of the week. Then they paid me off and said don't bother coming back in on Monday!
What were you sellingNever been sacked but been threatened many times in the past in my old job. Things really came to a head when my area manager decided I had opened a rival store selling the same type of stuff about 100 yards away. He had no proof abd threats of the sack then turned to threats of demotion, then threats to move me to another store 40 miles away and then he got a promotion and things went back to normal. 3 months later I quit and went to work in my new shop 100 yards away.
Took redundancy about 9 years ago , love my currant job
What were you selling
The mind numbing profession of selling greeting cards. The place I worked for treated me like shit for around 5 years so decided to start up myself. My wife previously worked for said company and had a misscarriage at work and had to go to the doctors so I went over to cover. The area manager turned up and when I explained why I was there his exact words were 'well she's got a job to do'. One of my biggest regrets is not sparking him out there and then.
Well, this is timely!
I - and my management colleagues in my division - haven't been sacked in terms of employment, but we have today been 'sacked' as a team by the Director. The guy walked into the department 30 mths ago and within months started closing down projects and moving people on. He proceeded to fill our Directorate in a Government department with hoards of contractors, including putting two highly paid contractors in senior roles (one hold a senior civil servant role) and who are feeding their company resources into the contractor pot via sub-contracting. They have delivered nothing and spent millions, whilst denigrating any deliverables they have not been associated with.
As the Directorate can not evidence value for money, the Director has come under severe pressure - he's been told that the budget for his contract staff is very much under risk. And so today - we were expecting this - he held a 15 min call with us to tell us that we were the problem, that we had developed problematic behaviours and culture (gulag, anyone?), that our failure to toe the line was the reason why the Directorate was failing etc etc etc. He immediately followed this up with an email saying the same - not only to us but to his SLT and others of our peers - and said that HR were behind him.
There was very little that was true or correct in his verbal and written attacks (quite to the contrary): we know that we are just about the last of the permanent employees, outside of his private courtiers, that he can use to deflect his incompetence and vanity. To a person, we were left almost speechless in our post-call get together.
There has been no opportunity to discuss his position, no 121 discussions with him or HR, and he has felt totally at ease with publicly decrying our professionalism. The lack of leadership has been staggering, and the bullying astounding. I'm so shocked that I can't even find any anger about it. Yes, there is resentment, but I think we're just relieved that, one way or another, our suffering of 24-30 mths will finally be over.
And for those of you who may think there's no smoke without fire, and I can most honestly say that the only smoke has been that which his contractors have blown up his ass over the last 30mths.
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