Recent Timeline

I'm going to turn a little personal in this blog post and describe the events that led to me being unemployed as of today. Well, technically, I was unemployed yesterday too, but I received my last pay check yesterday so as of today I no longer have a job or prospect of a paycheck in the near future.

As some of you know, I recently quit my cushy contracting position at Microsoft to take a job at a Web Consulting firm downtown. I interviewed with seven people before they hired me, including two phone interviews and two in-person sets of interviews, totaling over eight hours of talking. I also negotiated salary for three rounds, finally settling on a figure that was almost 20% less than what I was previously making. Part of my pay would be a bonus for the number of billed hours, and if my bonus came in on target plus if you include the generous company benefits (100% paid health, dental and vision, bus pass, gym membership, three weeks vacation, plus 2 personal days, etc.) I figured I'd at least come out even if not ahead. Plus working downtown with a shorter commute was immensely appealing.

I already had plans to go back East for a vacation when I took the job, and I offered to start after my vacation, but they said, no start right away - you can borrow against your vacation time. So here's the time line:

Monday, March 19 - Start the new job. Boss is away on business until Wednesday. Am given a few things to do, including a few orientation meetings.

Wednesday morning, March 21 - Meet with boss for the first time although she'd interviewed me so I already knew who she was.

Thursday, March 22 - Boss is away on business, but I receive an e-mail from her telling me to "watch my tone in e-mail." I don't know what she is referring to so when I ask for clarification, she says that people are very busy and I should not be so demanding when I ask for help and/or projects to work on.

Tuesday, March 27 - Receive e-mail from boss (since she's in Portland for the week) saying that it's very important that I meet my target of 35 billable hours per week. When I tell her that some of the projects she gave me are training and non-billable she says it's my responsibility to ask for more work and let her know if I won't be able to meet my billable target.

Week of April 2 - I bill 42 hours and feel like I'm getting into the swing of things with the job, even though I find the job extremely boring and I am not at all excited about the work I'm doing.

Week of April 9 - Take my scheduled vacation, borrowing against my vacation time.

Monday, April 16 - Take a sick day because I got sick on the last few days of my vacation.

Tuesday, April 17 - Get another e-mail from boss saying that if it's extremely important that I meet my billable target for the week.

Wednesday, April 18 - Get e-mail from boss saying that she's glad to see my attitude improving. She thought I was depressed and unmotivated before my vacation but she says I now seem more involved and that I should keep up the good work.

Tuesday, April 24 - Still sick with a lingering cough, I take another sick day to try and recover. Don't check my e-mail for the day and in the afternoon get a call from my boss's boss asking me how things are going. I tell him that I'm sick, but in the conversation it comes out that I'm not that excited about the job, that I've been feeling a lot of pressure to produce billable hours, that the job isn't what I thought it would be, etc. He tells me that my boss has set up a meeting at 8:30 in the morning to discuss these things. Apparently he'd been invited to the meeting too.

Wednesday, April 25 8:30AM - Have quite possibly the weirdest meeting of my life. My boss and her boss tell me that I have a bad attitude. They get the feeling that I don't want to work there, that I'm not excited about my job, that "I've checked out of the job" and have been "phoning it in." Everyone else wants to work here; they're excited about the company, I'm told. I say I don't appreciate being judged on such subjective measures and would prefer to have something concrete against which to judge my success of failure. When I tell them that I don't want to fail at my job, they say that's not good enough. You have to want to succeed, they say. They tell me that they're going to file an official two week progress plan with HR to try and get me to improve my attitude.

Thursday, April 26 - My boss is away on business, but I get a meeting notice for a follow-up meeting on Friday morning to "see how things are going."

Thursday night, April 26 - Go out drinking with some friends and I tell them that I'm probably going to get fired tomorrow. They think that's ridiculous, as do I. There's a two week plan I'm going to follow, right?

Friday, April 27 - wake up with a wicked hangover, one of the worst I've had in a long time. Throw up in the morning, stumble to the bus, get into the office, throw up again in the bathroom at work. Start to feel better, although I really wished I'd taken another sick day.

10:30AM Meeting - Meet with my boss and she has a manila envelope which she doesn't open. We talk about how things are going. I say fine, except still sick, and I'm surprised that she wanted to meet so soon after Wednesday's meeting. She says that my attitude didn't improve after the Wednesday meeting and that she said I looked like I didn't want to be there the rest of the day. She tells me again that people want to work here, that it's a privilege. I tell her that I wasn't excited about our Wednesday meeting, rehashing all the things I'd said before about the job not being what I expected, the pressure to bill hours, etc. She excuses herself for a minute, and five minutes later, her boss comes in. He says that my boss pulled him from a director's meeting because she said she "couldn't deal with me." I say I don't really know what the problem is; I want to see the two-week plan, try and do whatever it is that she wants me to do. Conversation begins to deteriorate and he then excuses himself. Five minutes later a HR person comes in with a termination letter for me to sign. Today would be my last day of work, although I would be paid through next week, minus my borrowed vacation time. I tell her I don't really know what is going on. She doesn't know either. I sign the paper and she escorts me out the door. I get to the front desk and all my stuff is in a box - someone had gone to my desk to retrieve my personal stuff. I hand in my card reader and away I go.

So, in total I worked there 22 1/2 days. I think I'm better off not being there, but still - I'm left scratching my head. What happened? Very, very strange.

As for what I'll do now, I don't know. I certainly don't want to jump right into another job. I have enough money saved up where I probably don't have to work for the rest of the summer. My girlfriend gets done with school on June 27 and has July and August off so I'd really like to see if I could hold out in May and June and then take some fun trips with her this Summer.

Yesterday, I did a lot of reading and made banana bread. Today I'll do some more reading and writing. Tomorrow I plan on making lasagna for dinner. Thursday I'm volunteering out by Mt. Rainier doing some trail reconstruction and Friday I'm meeting a friend for breakfast. This weekend, my girlfriend and I are going camping in the San Juan's and next week - well I haven't planned that far ahead yet. I still have a lingering cough so I'd really like to kick that and feel 100% healthy. I guess that's my goal - get healthy and catch up on some reading and writing that'd I've been meaning to do. I also want to look into filing unemployment. If I can collect unemployment, I definitely won't have to work this summer.

Check back for more updates - I'll keep all two of you readers filled in on what's going on.