A Christmas Present
As I mentioned below my office was closed down on Tuesday leaving me out of work. Yesterday I sat at home and made phone calls and also had an appointment with a couple of fellows to discuss some collaborative business efforts. While I was sitting at home the doorbell rang and I found a package delivered by UPS at my door. I thought it might have been something ordered by my wife for Christmas and that it might be something that she would prefer I didn’t see right then so I took it up to our bedroom and left it there for her to find when she returned from work.
When she got home she had no idea where the package came from so then it hit me, it was probably some little Christmas treat from my former employer that had been ordered prior to the decision to close the office. I was correct.
A number of thoughts ran through my mind at that point. I guess you can imagine a few of them, but the two overriding and conflicting thoughts were, How dare them just toss me and my coworkers aside and send this token the very next day
and That was really pretty nice of them to send this out to the employees with the financial problems they are facing.
I really didn’t expect to feel any bitterness toward my former employer but there is some there. From a strictly objective point of view they made a decision that I most likely would have made myself given their distance from the Atlanta office. From my feeling side I can’t help but feel a little betrayed. I’ve worked with them for five months and was kept covered up for three of those months and told I had done an excellent job.
Last week I put together a demo application for a prospective customer that went off with rave reviews from the customer and others in my company. This week I’m calling old contacts and looking real hard at the work I did on that demo and thinking about the lack of a non-compete contract… and looking for a phone number.
General | Larry Burton | 12 December 2002 |
