First Job Ends

As some of my friends may know, I tendered my resignation for my first job. My last official work day should be on the 9th of April, after serving the one month's notice period. I didn't wanted to quit without securing another job first but it was becoming so unhappy to continue on.

On the evening of the 27th of March, Friday, I received an email from my manager informing me that my last day of work would be on the 6th of April. His name starts with a D, so I shall call him Donkey here. To quote his exact words, he stated that “we have decided to release you earlier on Monday 6 April 2015”. What are we? Prisoners? I do not need you to release me, I did not get fired.

I replied to his email asking whether I would be reimbursed for that three days because my contract stated that the one month’s notice worked both ways. In addition, I raised a concern over the amount of handover work to be done over this short period of time. He only told us so last minute. I had explained to him that certain things are hard to understand in words, and hence we would do our part to communicate well with the last team mate left in the department. But the thing is, much of the handover materials were already done. He was just oblivious of all our efforts. He didn't reply to my email.

On the night of the 29th of March, Sunday, he messaged both my colleague, J, and I to meet him at the office earlier at 10.45am the next day for a quick chat. We thought he wanted to finally tell us what was going on. However, he just thanked us insincerely and informed us that today would be our last day. O.O His face just looked the usual awkward and slightly irritated and angry. He told us to leave our laptops behind, pack up and leave immediately. He added that we did not have to clean up our laptops because the IT team would settle that. Like when we on our laptops wanting to delete the stuff ourselves, he repeated that we did not need to do so. He said that we would still be paid until our last official day and that this decision was made by the management. I don't know who is this "management" he was referring to because for all we know, he may have decided this himself. Humph. 

At that point, we were super shocked that we didn't question him on the reason. While we were packing, he asked us whether we were ready to go because he had to leave the office. I knew he was going to meet the last colleague left to announce the news the her.  Like seriously, why are we being chased out like this. Effectively, we were only given 10 minutes to get our belongings and leave. It was as though we were fired because of some serious mistake at work.

You know other employees get to send out farewell emails to their colleagues on their last day, but we were deprived of this chance. We didn't get to bid farewell to the Singpost uncle we had worked closely with. We did not get the chance to bid farewell to all the retail staff at my branch, who had helped us so much, much more than our own manager. Most importantly, we did not even have to the chance to bid farewell to our own teammate, the last one left. He told us to leave before he announced the news to her. Like can you imagine how she would feel?! So stressed up, so shocked, so cheated, so left out. Of course, she already knew we were leaving before we even tendered [Donkey still ask us to keep it from her la], just didn't know it was suddenly on that very day. Donkey had always emphasized on the “importance of teamwork”, but what kind of team spirit was this? So secretive for what. 

After we left the office and thought about it, we were so angry and upset. I was angry at myself for not questioning or "scolding" him. Is this how a manager is expected to treat his employees? He did not inform us beforehand and we were made to leave within 10 minutes. We barely had enough time to even pack up or find plastic bags or boxes for us to put our stuff. Why do we get such treatment when we had done nothing wrong? It was as if a few more minutes or an extra day in office would kill him. Like as if we would steal some important information from the department if we stay any longer. We had contributed our best during our time spent there, but just because we had decided to leave, we were treated as though we were enemies. He didn't respect us at all and he was unprofessional in the way he handled the situation. As the manager of the team, it seemed as though  that he did not value us and our contributions at all. He claimed that the decision to let us leave earlier is out of goodwill, but it did not seem that way to us.

As our boss, he did not even wish us well or said bye to us. He really don't have any people's skill and he wasn't a good leader at all, and probably will never be. We learnt most of the things by ourselves because he was never there to give us advice and solutions. He merely asked us to check with other people, how convenient. Hence, at some point of time, we didn't even want to consult him in anything anymore. There is no point, explaining so much [because he is clueless] just to solve the issue myself again. 

At the end of day, all the contributions are not appreciated. We were given 10 minutes and out we go. 

This is really a lesson of life.