Phone Calls That Make Your Day!

Got hired back on a job at twice the pay after getting fired...

I don't really believe in Karma...but it is nice to hear stories like this. Some companies will actually do the right thing...but only after they have tried everything else!

I am in the middle of an argument with an insurance company that I am bound and determined to make sure they do the right thing, no matter how many different things they try!

Drew K

I would be a little cautious of leaving a good job and going back, if offered. Of course, if you are currently unemployed, you don't have much, if anything, to lose. For one thing, employers are often leery of employees who quit and later return. Especially since, if I remember correctly from an earlier post, you were one of the leaders of the revolt. And remember, even if they finally got rid of 2 levels of management above you, the same top management that kept these clowns on until the boat sank is still in place. Maybe they learned from the experience, maybe not. If it took them 2 months after a whole department quit and they still had to stoop to contacting former employees to make a decision, they don't seem like the brightest folks around.

In any case, I wish you well.

I came back to a job a year after they'd laid me off. The new engineering manager was a stand up guy and treated me well. Upper management was still the same though and he spent a lot of time fighting with them.

In the end they got us all. They decided they wanted to close our office and move R&D several states away. None of the engineers went. We kept in touch with the manager who said they allowed him to double his staff and yet his productivity was only half. He then left a short while later.

Goes to show you, if the upper tier is rotten, it doesn't matter what's in between. They had a well oiled machine that they didn't appreciate. They soon lost it.

tcmtech, good luck with it. I hope it all works out for the best.

Not really looking to go back and being my wife has a job that pays as well as mine did plus has better benefits I am in no hurry to go back to work. She may be in for a fair sized raise as is being they are already asking her if she would be interested in going to a fairly expensive training seminar and she has only been there a few months!

The main reason I am not working or looking for work is that as some of you know we are building a new house and to be honest my skills are worth more to us having me home working on the house project and everything that goes along with it than having me at a normal job and hiring the work done.

If I go to work I go on my terms.

As far as them taking some two months to check in with me and the other guys who quit compared to most other companies I have ever worked for I consider this to really be on the ball by my standards!

At least they realize where the problem is and are taking the efforts to contact those who are directly involved opposed to getting their info after its gone through two levels of management's filtering first. To me this shows above and beyond company organization and willingness to look at their internal problems and work on them over just sweep it under the rug pretend it never happened and go on a cluelessly as ever.

Now personally in my opinion I suspect that they have probably had a horrible time finding replacements and keeping them so yes it's entirely plausible that they had no choice but to go back and see exactly which whom where and why the poop hit the fan. Contracts with the railroads pay very well and have considerable responsibility clauses involved. It's a good chance that not fixing this problem and having to break a contract could be looking really really expensive on their part.

My best call came just six months after I was laid off from a position as a NC/CNC service engineer. It had been the best job of my life up to that point, and I was very well paid as well! When I was laid off, things were not so good. It was the late seventies and the oil bubble had burst. In short, I couldn't find a decent job that paid anything near what I had been making. So I started my own company repairing machine tools. I did amazingly well and was making a decent living in just three months. Then the call came. It was the company that had laid me off just six months before. They had been referred to call me by one of my regular clients. So I was able to walk back into my old employer, doing the exact same job, but I was charging them twenty times what they used to pay me each hour! I continued to be called by them for many months and ultimately billed them for over six-hundred hours!

They say 'never go back'... but I dunno.... I've never gone back.
It's certainly nice to get asked.
From what I've seen of organisations, the culture waxes and wanes, but once a good team has broken up you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

I feel my metphors are getting a tad shaken up now...... must be these new pants.
Del

Quite simply, the ones that invite adventure.

• Fear - courage = disappointment.
• Fear + courage = adventure!

I am thinking that if they were to call again and ask me to come back that this time I would have everything I want put in writing and signed by people far enough above me that I am nearly untouchable unless I do something really stupid at work.

Personally I am not holding my breath on this one. I really doesn't want to go back to work anywhere until next fall (or never).

Now on another note I just found out the manager I had at the job before this last one got tossed and so far two of the people I used to work for have mentioned I should look into seeing if I could get my job back there as well. It's been two years now and they have yet to find a replacment with my skill set as I understood it. As I understanding one of the guys I got along with real well with there is now in his position so I would have someone above me that I found honorable and trustworthy.

Ever notice that when you don't want something it seems to just keep falling on your head constantly? Maybe I should focus on not wanting my stocks to go up next?

Do you really think the root of the management problem is/will be fixed? And proceed with Great Caution! A "Survey" done at my workplace was designed to eliminate the "Surveyor's" enemies!

I can only speculate given previous experiences with the company and word of mouth gotten first hand from other locations in other territories that they really honestly do put customer care and employee well being at the top of the list.

There were a number of examples I knew of where past and present site leaders and managers were either demoted down to basic worker status or outright fired over similar and even lesser actions and misconduct than what I saw going on.

When dealing with annual contracts worth multi million to tens of millions of dollars that require initial investments made by the company that can anywhere from $1 million to over $20 million per site that do not easily transfer over to other departments of the company should a contract go bad they tended to watch whom they put where in the sites workforce.

Sloppy, lazy, hot headed, selfish, or unstable employees got weeded out rather quickly because of that high dollar investment.

I felt they understood the concept that one manager or site leader is easier and cheaper to replace than having to retrain a new workforce under them every few months.

I got the impressions that they knew who made the money and kept the contracts alive and it wasn't the site leaders or managers shuffling papers. It's the people out in the trucks in the snow, wind, pouring rain, miserable hot sun, working side by side with the customers and putting in 60+ hour work weeks 51 weeks a year without complaint that keep those contracts alive.

I have a theory about management:

Upper management means well, they want safe happy workers because they see statistics that show productivity is up and costs are down when workers are happy and working with safe procedures (not taking shortcuts).

Problem is, Upper management also has another side that is profits driven, many of them get bonuses or stock payouts when profitibility is up.

So they tend to hand out directives for people to work safely and be happy.

Middle management knows they can't make anyone happy (except for thier bosses when profits are up) so they tend to manage with profits and productivity at mind, with a close second thought of safety (because they know it can be expensive and detrimental).

Things tend to work well when Upper management is kept close enough to the work being done so they are 'in the loop'. They can see how their productivity policies can hurt moral, safety and the productivitiy they want to improve!

I have worked for several companies where the distance between the work and upper management is so far that they don't have a good grasp on what is being done anymore.

Want evidence of my theory? Watch undercover boss and see what happens when upper management gets their hands dirty.

This is all about management, leadership is another thing altogether. It is an almost make believe land where the middle management looks out for the best interest of the workers and keeps upper management in the loop (by force of will!).

Drew K

Yes I have yet to see a company with really bad upper level management.

It's the damned lower level jerks that are the largest problem I have ever had to deal with. Seems like too many have a priority agenda to serve themselves in any way and at any costs to the company possible until found out by the upper level.

The phone call I got was from a department at the home headquarters office (I Googled the phone number) so I am assuming that they are the department whose job is keep the top people informed of what the little people are really doing and what's going on in between for good or bad.

I can't imagine any other reasons why a company would be calling former employees who walked out on them and be asking so many questions about their immediate managers plus be offering the former employee a gift certificate card as a reward for their comments at the end.

Still methinks I am glad I am not my former manager right now.

I hope everything works out for you, whether you return to that company or not. I have no sympathy for them since they made their own bed. But it's encouraging (and rare) that upper management has noticed a problem and is taking some effort to correct it. Whether they really can or will remains to be seen.

Been there done that. Once was at a large company where some people were in cliques that weren't accountable and others (like me) had to do their work. I got blamed for losing a big contract (despite it being a group effort). Before I left I documented the work that I was doing for clique members, but none of them were interested in a debriefing. Later one called begging me for details, but sorry I didn't keep copies (they'd thrown away my files).

Another company owner decided to put his lazy and incompetent children in charge. Several of us got laid off for complaining about the resulting death spiral. But then they couldn't win contracts because with us they'd lost most of their experience and credentials. Over the next two years they called me three times asking if I might come back? I interviewed, but the vibe was so bad I declined. After three years they closed the doors. Can't say I was surprised, but I'm not happy because too many good people lost their jobs and the company had had a lot of potential.

Another company had a toxic working environment. The owners pitted me against a loud rude salesman for entertainment value. The salesman's botched proposals created overruns that were everybody's fault but his. When the owners decided to put that salesman in charge of our department, he told me he would destroy the project tracking systems I'd implemented. About a year later the salesman called and asked if I might be available? He gloated that he had solved their cash flow problems by getting rid of everybody - he was the only fulltime employee and they hired temps when they had a contract. Funny thing, those temps weren't working out too well… I never worked for them again and I think they no longer have that department.

I can pick them, huh? Sorry to be so long-winded. Just wanted you to know that I understand your situation. Probably better things will come, as they have for me. Best of luck!

Your honesty will help them fix their culture problem.

If you refuse to return to job offerred you could lose unemployment benefits.

I was laid off so much in my early career in the steel business that I was introduced as a n expert witness on unemployment when I testified before a house ways and means subcommittee on the subject. I had a 3+ inch stack of unemployment books.

Good luck with the job and the house. Your talents will be highest and best use at both.

Milo

I am not drawing unemployment and never have.

I keep enough personal resources in play as backups to always have a stable fallback plan in place.

As far as my honesty and openness goes so far in life its cost me more jobs than it has ever rewarded me with. Not that I mind that one bit! I don't tolerate working with liars backstabbers and crooks well.

For those who are curious as to where I worked and how they are getting rated this public record of opinions may prove itself interesting. Apparently the problems I had are not uncommon.

Indeed.com - Savage Services Reviews.

Long after follow up that sort of made my day.

I heard from a reliable source today that my old boss got canned a few months ago and on top of it bad enough that his wife had to pick up a job to keep the family going.

Given the high amount of truck driving work available locally the only rational thing I can come up with as to why he is not making good money driving truck is his licence may have gotten pulled along the way.

Oh well maybe he should have spent more time and effort actually working rather than trying to get others to do his work for him!