…besides being a band I used to listen to, Big Wreck accurately describes what happened to me Friday.

What happened:

-I was driving with my friends Bethany and Jarred.

-A lady decided I didn’t exist, despite hard evidence to the contrary.

-I braked suddenly. It became clear that my efforts would not be enough.

-Right at the point where a sudden acceleration on her part would avoid an accident, she stopped dead in the road.

-Jarred said “WOAPPP!”

-The cars collided.

My car didn’t take that much damage. The body shop says he can fix it for about 3500 dollars. Unfortunately the car isn’t worth but about 3000, so insurance says it’s done for. In a proud day for Hondas everywhere, the Explorer I ran into was deemed totalled and undrivable for the collision had caused the axle to bend. Honda: 1 – Explorer: 0

Everyone was OK and safe, more or less. Sadly, the other lady was driving with a suspended liscence and no insurance, which sucks for her.

Good news is that the insurance company will give us some cash money for the wreck and everyone’s safe. Bad news is that I’m still out a car.

What if I get one of these instead?

Jamion

EDIT: It should be noted that the accident was deemed Not My Fault. That is all.

So it’s a little less than two weeks until the wedding, and as you can imagine there are a lot of things to be done. We’re both so excited; we hope you can make it!

But complicating the matter is the fact that I do not have a job. I’ve been looking, non-stop, for the last three weeks and still no leads. And, because many of you have asked about how I came to be unemployed, I thought I’d write and speak a little on the issue. I debated writing about it at first but I feel like it’d be appropriate to come out with what’s happened.

When I left my job to go to Austria, I was told that in order to go, I would have to quit my job and surrender my position because of the length of the absence. So I wrote a letter of resignation from my job saying the standard boilerplate about not being obligated to come back, and the company I worked for not being obligated to hire me back. I did this to protect my employer and myself, and because I thought it a measure of courtesy towards them. However, in private talks and in talking with supervisors and coworkers before I left, it was often said that they couldn’t wait for me to come back, that I certainly could come back, and that I would have my job. My supervisor met with me several times to get a specific date for my starting back to work (it was supposed to be August 15th) and even got a worker to fill my position for three months. In speaking to the worker and my supers, it was well-understood that this would be a temporary assignment. Things were generally spoken of in terms of “when you come back”.

Well, I went over to Austria and stayed in touch with my employers, going so far as to write emails and a thank you note for the opportunity. However, when I called a week before I came back, I was told that someone had been hired in my place… the temp worker (a great person in my opinion, but I digress) who had been told and had told me that she was only working for the three months I was gone.

Um… What?

When I said to my super that I didn’t know that that was the arrangement (my job being given to someone else), he changed tones completely to steel and told me that I had not been told that I was going to get my job back, that they said they were going to “reevaluate things when I got back”.

Erm… OK.

The super said that I could come and talk to him about it when I came back, leading me to think that perhaps they had a better or different position for me. That’s fine, I thought, since I went away to become better qualified, that makes sense. But no. After a few days of run-around (come back in a few days, I was told, as I squirmed, jobless) I was again told that my job had been hired out and that there was nothing for me. I was then hastily rushed out of the office and that was that. As I walked out my former co-workers barely spoke to me. Fin.

So, my question became, how on earth could an administration come up with the moral reconciliation for

1) Giving a worker the opportunity to go away for something that would make him a better worker,

2) Hiring someone else to do his job on a temporary basis, only to hire the same person permanently,

3) Not telling me that the above happened, effectively making me unemployed with six weeks to go until my wedding, and

4) Not even batting an eye about it.

…I was (and still am) confounded about this. What gums up the matter more is the fact that my friend, a student worker at this company, was approached by one of my supers the other day with this conversation (noted, now, this is hearsay, but I trust this person expressly):

Super: “Now, _____, I’m sure you’ve heard we let Jamion go…”

Friend: “Um, yeah…”

Super: “Well, I can’t tell you why… but… well, ….let me just say… Never be disrespectful to an employer. When you get into the real world, you have to remember you have real jobs, and you have to respect your employer.”

Friend: “Uh… OK.”

…WHAT!!?!?! The above conversation, if it really occured (and I think it did) would suggest that I was disrespectful to my employer whilst I was employed there. Which is simply not true. I cannot even imagine what could even be misconstrued as disrespect. When I worked there, I was hesitant even to speak about my job OUTSIDE of the office, nevertheless inside, and not even poorly!

What bothers me the most is that if the above conversation occured, then it has probably occurred to my other coworkers, “explaining” why my employer did what they did and smearing my name with no defence from me. Which would, by the way, explain why I wasn’t spoken to when I returned.

I realize I have to legal leg to stand on as far as my job goes. I did, indeed, sign a letter freeing the company from hiring me back. But I am greatly disturbed by the circumstances of my release. If it was because of misconduct–even if I was disrespectful–there are company policies that dictate that dismissal only occurs after three well-documented and progressively severe measures of discipline. That method of institutionalized recourse never occured.

What the bottom line is, is that these people, without thinking of the repurcussions of their actions, decided to omit me from the company without any explanation (hiring the new person did not HAVE to happen, by the way. And they certainly should’ve let me know about it ahead of time). I’m certain they thought that I would find employment somewhere in the world but the hard facts are that my fiancee is going to school, binding us to this one town where there is, currently, no work. We are getting married in two weeks, and she’s going to school and working full-time, while I will be lucky to get a job as a telemarketer when I get back from the honeymoon.

I don’t mean to complain too much. God is taking extreme care of us. And I believe that things happen for a reason. But I get very upset about gross injustice, and that’s what this is. Despite any legal or contractual obligations, this is a moral issue, and in my opinion (and countless others who know this story firsthand), it is reprehensible. If for some reason you’re reading this and you work where I used to, that’s the truth, the real story as it happened to me, and I want you to know that I never once was disrespectful to my bosses intentionally, and if I was unintentionally, I was never reprimanded about it in formal discipline.

I’m glad I got that all off of my chest. That post was more for Austria than anybody. For those of you that have already responded, thank you for your support and kind words…

Back soon,

Jamion