Towards the middle to end of August I had vacation days to use up before the fiscal year end. In the middle of those days on a Wednesday late afternoon I got a Facebook message from my summer partner. He told me that he (7 years), my planting partner (4 years) and our boss (15 years) had been let go and wasn’t sure if there was to be more firings or not. I thought he was joking. There was no reason for them to be let go. I immediately called him on his cell, which was a company cell. The call went straight to voicemail. I texted another one of my colleagues and asked if that was true or not. I never got an answer from him.
I continued a conversation via Facebook messenger and began to believe him. Though I was in disbelief that it was happening. There was no reasons given. Three people had been let go and not given reasons. There was a theme that seemed to be in place, that everyone that had been there longer than three years was being let go. My fate was unknown but I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that made me nauseous. I knew without knowing that I would be next when I came back.
There was another guy who was unclear whether or not he was still there or not. So I called him (8 years). He also had a company cell that he used for personal use, we all did. He answered. I asked him if he had heard about what happened and he said he knew that our boss had been let go but didn’t know about our other two co-workers. He sounded astonished. I asked if he knew anything about his future and he said no. I shared with him my concerns about myself. He wondered why I was worried.
I was worried because my planting partner and I had had a troublesome planting season. We had a 2 year old planter that wasn’t doing what it was supposed to be doing and had dealt with subpar field conditions that were not favorable for our planting setup. If my planting partner was let go I only imagined it was because of that planter we were having issues with. That 2 year old planter was on the Coop’s fields that were essentially for the Coop to advertise their products to farmers. And we had two consecutive rough years with them and that planter.
We wrapped up our phone conversation with him trying to reassure me that I had nothing to worry about. That he was sure I was safe. He said over and over again that he didn’t think I would be fired.
I was not assured. I was panicked. I was thinking I needed to go clean out my stuff while no one was there. The other guys didn’t get much time to do so and were watched the whole time. I settled on that going in the middle of the night would not be the best thing to do. I wanted to call my boss’ boss and ask him directly. I decided against that as well. For now I was still employed. I still had use of my phone, I still had keys to the office, and according to upper management I had no idea what was going on. I began to plan that night and sleep never really came.
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