So, as many of you know, and many of you don’t, yesterday we got fired.
Why?
Well, there reasons in our opinion that is clear and those not so clear. The termination paperwork cited “performance and behaviour problems” as the issue for , we have reason to believe, however, given something said during the “exit interview” that there may be more at hand
We can’t go into too much detail about how much bullshit that is, considering until up to about a month and a half ago we had no job description for our position, therefore no guideline outlining performance requirements for the jobs that were created for us, and there was one large portion of it that they had never given us the guidelines for, despite our asking for specific requirements to fulfill the duties.
According to this paperwork this had been an issue for “many months”, which was news to us because last week Important Boss had informed us that we had been doing a great job. When we brought this up to them during the firing the woman from HR said “we also found your Twitter account” and mentioned (without actually specifying a date, time or what was said) a comment made about a patron that wasn’t very nice.
This put up flags in our head for the following reasons:
· Our Twitter account is private, our name is not attached, nor is it attached to an e-mail address that people who “know us” in real life are aware of.
· In 160 characters of a Twitter bio, specifically ours, there is no way to determine destination/identity – we could literally be anyone, anywhere in the world.
· The Twitter account is linked to this blog where we detail an entire life of mental illness and how we struggle with it day-to-day.
In short, however they cut it, it looks to us, and others, like they discovered this account, somehow connected it to us, and decided that they didn’t want someone with our particular mental disabilities working for them.
This decree did not come from the staff level; it came from a board of directors, the only people not privy to our mental illness. The entire staff we worked with on a day to day basis has knowledge of our disabilities. Though likely it’s a staff member who turned their attention to this blog.
If we wanted to raise the issue we could bring up sexual harassment, and manipulation of a known mentally ill person by their manager; issues that can have an impact on “performance and behaviour” in the work place. if you look up sexual harassment information those are key words used to describe why any sort of harassment in the workplace is unhealthy and can effect employee work performance.
Either way, there are further circumstances surrounding this termination that we cannot discuss at the moment, things such as sponsorship paperwork they were willing to sign less than two months ago, and other issues like lack of lunch breaks of any sort during shifts.
Just wait until people find out what this “business” does, which someday will be disclosed since we all had the smarts not to sign one bit of a confidentially agreement at any time.
Important Boss took us aside after the Human Resources staff was done with us and apologized, telling us he tried to prevent it from happening, that he enjoyed working with us and that we HAD been showing improvement, but the board had felt it too late, and so went ahead with the termination. We believed him, every word, because we could see the pain and disappointment in his eyes and we stood in the office, heaving and crying, our eyes darting around in a panic regarding the state of our future. The poor young man had us as the first person he had ever had to fire.
So, after we were fired, mid-shift and sent home we walked around, drank and became of zombie in the heat of the city...we're still fragile about the situation, but we tend to "heal" fast from most things...this time it's just more of a struggle as we are confused and concerned about our future.
For those of you who have been trying to show us a silver lining by saying we can collect benefits of some sort…thank you, however, we are not eligible for any unemployment, social security, or any other benefits, except, ironically…the food shelf/food bank services of the city, for reasons we are not eligible are those that we are not comfortable sharing in this blog just yet. Our only option is to find some sort of work, however much we can as fast as possible before rent is due again.
This week, in two and a half days actually, we have a guest coming (a Twittercrush!) to stay with us for a few weeks. We have already asked for his help in getting us to sit down and work on art grants for writing and painting, as well as work on query letters to send to literary agents. We have years left to write about, and the last year a half of our life could be contained in a book by itself.
When we talked to The Father last night he told us to check ourselves into a hospital. We refused.
“We just need to be strong, dad”
“You are strong, honey” he said to us.
He told us that yesterday our name went out in the prayer chain at his church, and said he is as confused as we are about why life keeps dealing us difficult hands at every turn. Life only gives you what it thinks you can handle, but eventually, given enough things, it might just give you too much all at once. Considering our rental property issue of the past two weeks, some health issues we’ve had to deal with and now this, we’re pretty topped up with shit that life can give us.
It’s hot out today, we went to take care of some business with government official regarding our being fired, and on the way home we went into a local gas station/convenience store. The manager on duty gave us a free Slurpee/slushie, so we asked if they were hiring. He said they are hiring for night shifts with their chain of stores.
“Are you crazy?” he asked. “Every time I hire someone new for the night shift they say they can’t work it because they are crazy.”
We smiled, clearly evading the question, laughed and said “I can work a night shift, no problem.”
He then told us we had a great smile and said to come in tomorrow afternoon for an interview.
This job is far beneath our capabilities, and is likely only one night a week, but we are willing to take it if it means eight hours of week on a pay check while we look for something else. We also reassigned with a local temp agency today.
We will continue to look for more work, obviously, because being a gas station attendant isn’t something we desire for even the short term (nor are graveyard shifts); but as we are well aware, having had the life we’ve had…sometimes you gotta do what you gotta go…and just see what happens.
~Frank et al
{{HUGS}}
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