Introduction

Hello and welcome to my blog, I have been laid off for a little over a year now, and I have decided to tell my story here. Many people and politicians argue that Americans are unemployed due to our lack of interest in finding job. They argue that as long as we receive unemployment benefits we won't want to better ourselves or for that matter find a job. In my case I believe I was laid off due to immoral and greedy individuals who currently hold positions of power. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, feel free to share yours about my series of blogs.

This is the first post, in which I will be introducing what happened leading up to The Day I was Laid Off.

Summer of 2008

That summer morning, I had missed the morning meeting we always had before opening. I walked in and the mood was just dark, no smiles, no greetings, nothing. A very dear friend told me an order had been handed down to lay off all of our department "helpers". About 50 were being let go, they had been assured one more month of work, it was first of the month on the last day of the month they would officially be unemployed.

A month later a party was thrown for those being laid off, they were offered help with job hunting, told to apply for unemployment benefits, and they were offered office equipment use in order to help facilitate the hard task at hand.

Later I learned that several supervisors who were working past their age of retirement, had offered to retire so that those or some of the employees could conserve their jobs. However officials had decided that those employees were to be let go. "Helpers" made the minimum, those offering their salaries made a minimum of 4 grand a month most of them were paid more.

By the time those employees left none of them had found jobs, and the director of our department quit, citing that it was immoral to stand by watching as employees were being laid off, and the directors salary of 11 grand a month remained untouched.

That summer my job was spared, and it seemed like that was the last of the drastic actions necessary. My job survived until the next summer, and so the story begins in early spring of the last year.