My boss waited until I got back from vacation to lay me off without warning.
Context
This happened a couple weeks ago and I’ve kinda just been in a depressed state but I figured if I’m finally gonna talk about my crappy former boss might as well come here.
I had a vacation planned for a while so I requested to meet my boss way in advance so that I had time to speak with her, move meetings and deadlines around, etc. We had our weekly 1-on-1 the day before I left and she chatted me up about it like everything was normal.
Asked where I was going, what I was gonna do, etc. I made a jokey comment about how this was my first real vacation in years and how excited I was to have some real time off, and she had a kind of stale/unimpressed reaction to that.
She also in a roundabout way tried to inquire about how much my trip cost, because she “was looking at going there someday”. I didn’t directly answer because it felt off to me that she would ask something like that, seeing as she makes 10x as much as I did, but it was definitely not a cheap trip.
From the day I started she never treated me with respect or basic decency. I dealt with numerous comments and inappropriate questions about my disability, my “inability” to complete tasks without mistakes (tasks that she was supposed to train me on and never did, or assumed I would figure out how to do myself after getting help from others in my dept), and just lack of empathy and understanding when medical emergencies rose due to my disability or other things.
I chose to “rise above” and never spoke up about these comments or anything because:
A) None of it was (purposely) in writing or recorded
B) I didn’t want to give her a chance to give me the sack
Anyways, I get home from vacation, and I find that all of our meetings for that week were cancelled. Typically when she would cancel a meeting, she would reschedule as soon as she was available.
But these were all important meetings between us that she just cancelled without saying a word to me. This went on for 2 days, until mid-day Thursday I’m called down to HR’s office where I’m told I’m being laid off without any kind of warning, and also without severance.
This woman is sitting there holding back a smile the entire time I’m holding back tears. I get handed my last paycheck, walked back to my desk to collect my things, and was escorted off the property.
In hindsight it was definitely an “F you” from her to me, since she knew do not have transport and I was then forced to wait outside in the middle of the rain to get a car.
I don’t know why I didn’t say any of this to HR before I left, because at that point what did I have to lose, but something in me just said to keep being polite and respectful even while being told I’m losing my job and income for the foreseeable future.
I know this is more of a vent-y post so I apologise if those aren’t allowed here, but I just needed to say somewhere F- HER.
I don’t understand why it’s so hard for managers just to treat people with basic f-ing respect or how it’s ethical to seemingly know for a good chunk of time that I’m getting laid off and not say anything.
Had I even had an inclination I might be losing my job I would have cancelled my entire vacation and kept saving that money.