How much would you help your boss/company out if you got fired?
 

I have a ton of stuff in the pipeline at work and a lot of my best clients I consider personal friends. While I survived the latest round of layoffs this week, there's a very high chance I'll be canned next week when March's numbers come out. I'm expecting it to not be on good terms if it happens and not called a layoff. I know no one is irreplaceable, but I also know they're gonna have a hell of a time sorting out my accounts and territory without my help, maybe causing some clients to bolt to competitors. If I get canned with no severance, should I help out when they call to ask about accounts and deals in the works? Or just tell them to pound sand until they agree to pay me on a consultant basis?

Personally, if my employer doesn't even give me the courtesy of me having the chance of filing for unemployment, they can kiss my ass...

I don't understant that at all. You can't file for unemployment until you've been let go. Besides, I can make more flipping burgers than unemployment pays in AZ. I'll not be unemployed for one day, underemployed maybe, but not unemployed.

How do you know they'll call you? How do you know they'll want you back on a consultant basis? If they're going to fire you over the accounts, what makes you think they want to hire you back on a contractual basis for those same accounts?

I don't know that they would. But I know my boss has called former co-workers for months after they left, asking them for help with their accounts. Since I am the only person they have in this vast territory, they are gonna have a very hard time picking things up if I'm gone. Sure, they can hire someone else. But it will take six mos. to get them ramped up and in that time competitors will have eaten up every neglected account. In fact, part of the reason I'm not doing so well is that my territory was unmanned for years before I took it over and I've only been out west for a year.

Once you get fired, it's no longer your problem. If it was, you should be getting paid for your troubles. IMO.

Wait, they fire you, then expect you to "help them out" afterwards? At what rate? I'd certainly want at least 2X what I was making on salary if they are hiring you as a independent consultant.

If they expect you to help sort out things for free...I'd suggest any number of places they could go pound sand (should be easy in AZ). If your services are needed by them then they should pay for them.

I'll take a burger with cheese, no onions, and fries. Thanks. What is the best shake in your opinion? Chocolate, vanilla, or Strawb?

This (what you just wrote) should tell you a lot about your situation.

1) Don't count on them calling you back. Don't even think about it. If you're the goat now, you'll be the goat when they call you back. Start looking for a new job tonight.

2) If the competitors will eat up neglected accounts, maybe the competitors will also eat up neglected employees who oversaw those accounts.

Think it over. You might be in a better position than you first imagined. ;)

Hey, In-N-Out Burger starts at $10 per hr. and I can walk there from my house. Their shakes rock and they have some pretty hot teenie bopper ladies working there.

It's kinda weird at this company. I've never heard of anyone being fired for performance. It was either for egregious behavior or a layoff. I've heard they treat layoffs very well. Folks fired for cause are walked out the door. I'm hoping to be able to go to a competitor and get out of the non-compete if they can me. But if I have nowhere to go after getting canned, I'll not lift a finger to help them without an iron-clad compensation agreement. When I left a few yrs. ago to work in subprime, my boss called me all the time for help with accounts and I spent the last few weeks of that job writing reports on what all I had in the pipeline and training the girl they'd hired to replace me. Seeing an ad on Careerbuilder for my job based in Phoenix yesterday leads me to believe they're serious.

Believe me, I've been flooding the world with resumes since I got the ultimatum in early March. And I also just found a guy on our local Porsche BBS who hires for a competitor, though I don't believe they have field sales folks. Anyway, I'm not worried about ending up better off. I always land on my feet and every tight spot I've ever been in has always turned into a better situation. I'm just worried about the painful interim and uncertainty.

The best of luck & wishes to you, Rick...above all, cover yer ass...

In n Out puts everyone who works there on a fast track to management. Good people. Closed all holidays. Believe deeply in God and family which means the company has morals - a rarity in America, I'm afraid.

And speaking of morals - Rick - remember our discussion about the AE industry. I bet they're hiring in droves, particularly with this crappy economy. SmileWavy

What do you sell? What's the company produce? Is there a link?

that's what I learned when I first got here, and was like wtf? Better off flipping burgers (or workin' that potato slicer/dicer/chopper contraption) then working at a lot of the places here. Too bad for me it's hard work being always so happy go lucky like the people who work there :D

Recently our lead engineer left the company. We had also just endured a severe layoff months earlier. 5 guys gone, now the lead - we're down to 4 and we lost a lot of knowledge. This lead was one of the best if not the best engineer I've ever worked with and the dork thought of me as an 'equal'. He was very knowledgeable in Voice - I am not nor is anyone who was left on our team.

A few weeks go by and the conference calling system goes down hard. O_o - boss calls him up and he walks me through some stuff graciously. He's a great guy but I would have to be at a death's door situation to call him. I know he'd help - it isn't that - it's that the company should not be putting him in that spot unless they are willing to pay him. I'm certainly not going to ask him to spend his valuable time on someone who he doesn't work for anymore.

I've done it myself, mainly for the sake of the people left behind (keep them thinking you're a good guy and all) but there has to be a limit.

If I were fired and someone called me who I had a good relationship with I would spell it out for them plainly - "I can't help you. I want to because I like and respect you but the company you work for fired me. I can't help you with this, I hope you understand."


If your old boss calls you - I would put his number in your phone with a silent ring tone. All you'll see is the missed calls - don't listen to the voice mails he leaves.

Mark his email address in your email program as 'junk' and don't look back.

I wouldn't give my former employer the time of day. We parted ways amicably and professionally but that's where it ends. I owe them nothing the instant they stop paying me. I'm a free agent - as is everyone else.

Having a good work ethic is a generally good thing, but beware of the manipulative jerks that would seek to take advantage of that. Value yourself.

I'd have no guilty conscience whatsoever about telling him/them to pound sand. But I'd be happy to collect some more checks if I could get them to pay me for it. However, I will always help out my former customers. I truly do like them and they should not suffer because of our company's internal BS. And they could be great networking sources in the future too. Many of them are Facebook friends.

If you're fired, tell 'em to pound sand.

Laid off with references is different.

'They've got their problems, now you've got yours'; off you go.

That being said, I wish you the best of luck Rick, hopefully things will settle down for you job-wise?

I would give him this much help:
Help begins >







< help ends

Mike Vicks first job out of prison will be as a $10.00 an hour construction worker.

If a former multi-millionaire superstar quarterback will work for $10.00 an hour.... ;)

I admire you Rick. In many ways.

I'm having a hard time imaging Rick in the In-N-Out whites, with a .45 strapped to his hip. :D

If I got fired or laid off or otherwise my employment was terminated by a company, and they called me for assistance because they didn't have anyone that could figure something out....

$200/hr, 2 hour minimum.

especially if I was fired.

no way in hell, do you WORK for free for someone who doesn't employ you!

They probably won't call you. Don't help if they do. Not even for pay, you want to be getting those former clients for yourself.

What I was thinking, when I've left jobs, I usually don't look back at all.

If they fire you, doesn't that get you out of the non-compete automatically?

I agree with the others that once they stop paying your salary you owe them nothing... you're a professional, and professionals get paid for their time. If they call you up, quote them a "raking them over the coals" hourly... in my industry (Technology/financial services) this kind of situation is not unheard of and the quotes are typically in the $200-$300/hour range.

bingo.

I have only helped a former employer where I got canned a few times - and it was retail sales, on comission, and it was a friend asking me questions about car audio.
"Where is this in the warehouse?"
and then a few days later
"What wiring kit does he need for XXX amp and XXX subwoofer?"

That wasn't helping out the company it was helping a friend on comission, and he bought me bubble tea in the food court the next time I saw him at the mall. lol

There is a clear distinction between 'fired' and 'laid-off' Which are you anticipating? Even if the company fires you for poor performance; you can still apply for unemployment if you think that they were wrong. They have to provide solid, documented proof. If not you are entitled to unemployment bene's

To answer the question though I would not do squat. If I was 'fired' and they called me back or asked for help I would quote them a rediculous consulting fee. As stated above.............it's their issue

Totally depends on the circumstances of your departure, one of mine I would help in any way,shape or form, in another case I have made international calls at my cost to help them sort out an issue. Depends how you were treated and compensated at departure.

Again. unemployment is a non-issue. I'll never file because I'll never be unemployed for more than a few hours and any menial job pays more than unemployment in AZ.

I didn't think about this before, but if I don't confess to a future employer that I was fired by my previous one, might they wonder why I worked somewhere for eight years and didn't put anyone from that company as a reference?

Getting fired doesn't make my non-compete go away, but probably makes it much more likely that my former employer wouldn't bother with a suit. It's might be hard to lie to future employers about being laid off when I was fired, especially if they know anyone at my former employer. Word gets around. The folks laid off this week were taken well care of and I have no doubt the company would always say good things about them. Not so about fired folks. I'll probably know Monday or Tues. That's the most frustrating part of this job - I have no way whatsoever to track my revenue from day to day or week to week until I get this file the first week of the following month. It's truly a scratch-off lottery ticket.

For a future employer, you'd want to prepare a history - in VA you produced X revenue and were the #_ salesguy, then took over undeveloped territory in PHX and in 1 year built it to Y revenue, etc. The facts should speak for themselves. As for being "fired", you produced all the growth/rev from PHX that anyone could, see the facts, the company demanded impossibly faster growth in PHX, so you parted ways. As for references, probably would want to name someone there, unless all your direct supervisors left the company, in which case name your biggest supporter who has left.

Rick, didn't you move to AZ for the job? That's kinda raw that you go to all that trouble and expense to lose the job that brought you there. That same thing seemed to have happened to Red-Beard and may have happened to others.

If it were me, I'd spit in the burgers when the former bosses come in to In-And-Out.

No, you don't owe them dick.

BTW, what makes you think you can get a job at IAO in hours? I'll bet their files are full of resume's.

FWIW, I would only flip burgers as a true last resort. I'd try to work at a gun store and wait tables first.

The company didn't really move me out here. I paid for it all and even took a vacation day to drive out here. Yes, they did want someone to take over their long-neglected western territory and I pushed to be that someone. But it's been a year and the territory's revenue has actually shrunk by $300k. I probably bring in more new business than anyone else on our team, so discounting all the new business I brought in, the territory revenue would have shrunk by far more, had I not been here. But that's not how the company sees it. They see growth or failure, nothing in between. They see a territory that was performing ok when no one was working it and then shrunk by $300k after sending me out here. They don't care how much of my day is spent defending revenue from competitors, they don't care how much more it would have shrunk without me and they don't care how much it will shrink if they can me. I can see where they're coming from, but it's a pretty short-sighted plan they have. And it will cost them far more time and money to get someone else hired, ramped up and producing here than I've cost them.

And, that replacement won't do any better than you unless he/she has a lot of accounts that want to jump ship. Since moving accounts along to a new job is legally dicey, that's not likely to happen.

The Milgard Window outside sales guys all have a quota. None of them have made quota in 3 years. It's a matter of how much under, not just not making it. Maybe your managers need to get their head out of their ass.

However, you can and should make your case as you have to me/us. Make the statistics work for you.

You took one whole vacation day to move completely across the nation? You slacker. You're fired. :D

No, I had to take a Friday off when the movers came and I hit the road as soon as they were done that afternoon. I was in Phoenix Sunday afternoon. The 993 makes for a fun cross-country drive.

Our quotas are called percentage of goal and goal is always 107% of the previous year's revenue. Since I was way below goal for 2008, 107% of that lowered number is my new revenue goal. I was at 80% in Jan. and 92.8% in Feb. I'll probably be even closer to 100% for March, if not over 100%. But the boss said anything under 100% and I'm canned. Kinda ironic then that we're now paid commission starting at 70% of goal, while disciplined at the same time for being under 100%. WTF?. So while my job hangs by a thread, I'm making a lot more money now than I did last year, where commissions were only paid at and above 100% of goal.

We have some other requirements besides revenue and the consensus among the sales folks is that these requirements are totally unreasonable and unattainable. A few of us think the company made it that way on purpose, so they could fire 10-15% of the sales force piecemeal throughout the year instead of having waves of layoff, thereby spooking investors and customers and emboldening the competition.

Never burn bridges...ever!

I had a friend that sold wholesale garden equipment to nurseries. His territory was Orange County down along the coast. Needless to say, the demographics made his job a slam dunk. IN the good ol' days, his business grew to the point he was making more on commission than the management. Of course they split his territory to include some bad areas and gave off some of the rich area to another under performing area to equalize earnings and in the hope he could perform some miracle where sales were historically low.

That's what sales managers and company vice presidents do.

This was many years ago, but it taught me enough to stay the hell away from outside commissioned sales.

When you think about how many companies are in sad shape today, you have to wonder how much they brought unto themselves with piss poor thinking and micromanagement.

A little OT, but as I said on another thread, I'd fire 4000 white collars at GM today and go from there. IMHO, the people on the factory floor and outside know a lot more than the cubicles do.


The only thing that is better with more layers is wedding cake.

Very true. At the same time, if I get fired, and they call me back wanting assistance, they need to hire me on a contract basis.

Otherwise, how great would it be if they could just fire everyone and then get them to work for them for free.

I really do like commissioned sales, especially when it's the kind of job where the sales folks are totally insulated from the BS office politics. That's what got me into it about 11 yrs. ago. But let's be realistic here. How many companies plan to increase their PR budgets in this economy, even the ones that manage to stay alive? There's a natural attrition rate of about 25% of clients or revenue each year. So just getting back to last year's revenue means brinigng in a lot of new business to offset that attrition. I understand companies always have to grow and not remain stagnant. But the requirements we have for 2009 are just unrealistic for this economy. Doesn't matter to anyone in mgt. They do not want to hear any kind of arguments or criticism. Basically, they put the plan on stone tablets for the year, come down from the mountain and tell us how it's going to be. We have a new CEO now, so maybe he'll clean house after this plan fails.

Art, I've never burned a bridge in my life and never would. But I'm not going to be a doormat after getting fired either. Come to think of it, my boss probably won't call me for help. He'll make someone else do, whom he knows I was friends with and am less likely to turn down. That's how he rolls.

I've been thinking the same thing. I know Rick's business. I'm involved in an aspect of it. And like any type of media business that exists now, this one is shrinking almost weekly.

I think all these clowns on this thread who are stating "...they can kiss my ass" haven't a clue about what Rick does and who he's involved with.

I agree that if he gets called back, he should demand a nice-sized consulting fee. That's just business, and any firm worth their professionalism will understand.

But to basically state "screw you" will hurt him more than help him, IMO.