Well, i just had a fun month working at a healthcare organization. I was hired April the 13th and fired yesterday, the last day of my probation period during which they could fire me without any reason or cause. After that period passes i had a contract for a year which would make firing me basically impossible during that time.
I was hired to replace a guy who is going away on a 6 month trip starting this August. They were keen to hire someone early to give plenty of time to get up to speed. The position was to create and manage a shitload of management reports build in Excel (using VBA and SQL). The dude i was supposed to replace is literally the only person in the entire company that knows how the Excel sheet works, and pretty much all income depended on the reports generated by the Excel spreadsheet as its how they reported everything to insurance companies and the government. So, pretty important job all in all.
Unfortunately from the very first day the dude i was supposed to eventually replace was mostly away either due to him taking his remaining time off or because he worked in another office, roughly 100km away from were i worked. I was not expected to go to that other office as the distance would make commute times unreasonable. I saw the person who should teach me everything at most twice a week, the other days he simply wasnt around. So, most of the days i was left to my own, with no one there who was able to help me. I tried my best to make something of my working days, from day 2 i told my manager that hey, the situation was a bit shitty and im left doing some self study and exploring the system. The manager was constantly telling me that everything was fine and she understood it all took time and i was like well ok, i guess it will take a bit longer than i thought but it's fine because clearly thats what they expected.
So, after a few weeks passed i started to feel that i got some understanding of how things worked. I was starting to be able to do some actual work for other people. But suddenly i was let go because 'i wasnt pro-active enough'?? I asked the manager what i should have done differently, and how they expected me to work if the only person who could help me isnt around 4 out of 5 days, but she gave no answer to that except the 'you had to be more pro-active'. So yeah, nice, i was let go without any clear indication of what they had expected me to do.
Back to looking for another job...
It seems pretty clear to me what they wanted from you. They wanted you to learn the spreadsheet, whatever it takes. If the dude isn't showing up in your office you had to pester him on the phone everyday with new questions about stuff you didn't understand. That's just the basics. If you were really behind you were probably expected to pester him on weekends and possibly meet up with him to work on the spreadsheet. Whether that's reasonable or not, probably depends on what you were getting paid, but I'm sure that was their expectation. Maybe they should have spelled it out for you, or it was a test to see how proactive you were, and you failed.
In any case, learn from it and move on.
As for myself after 8 years working at the same place I'm negotiating my exit. In my country you get severance by law on 1 month per year you worked there if you get fired. There's an 11 year cap and there's a cap on the monthly payment. My gross salary is only a little above that cap, so it's essentially close to 8 months gross pay. Since it's a severance payment it's not subject to taxes, which is sweet, plus they have to give you a months notice, which they usually means they just pay you one month's salary so you'll leave right away. Plus I have a lot of vacation days saved up, so that will add up to about another month. If you quit you get nothing.
So I've been wanting to leave for a while, but the severance stuff was stopping me from going. There gonna do some restructuring in my department, which was the perfect opportunity to try to get out. At first they were ok with the idea, then they backed down and now apparently it's going forward again.
So basically I asked to get fired and apparently I'm getting my wish.
Since I didn't know exactly when this was gonna happen I don't have another job lined up. I have a few feelers out, but nothing concrete. I have to admit, I'm both excited and a little scared at the same time. I've been out of the interviewing game for a long time, but my resume is solid and I'm hoping to get a better paying position (mostly the reason I left). The question will be how long it takes me to find it. I'm budgeting about 3 months, hopefully it's sooner than that. I guess we'll see.
