Last Easter I was made redundant. It was a bit shit.
I’d only been back in work 8 weeks after being made redundant at Christmas.
Welcome to my Easter Redundancy Diary – I’m Hopping Mad!
Echoing my Christmas Redundancy Diary, this was how I coped at the time. I used my personal Facebook page to vent my spleen and pour out my bitterness so that it didn’t corrode me from the inside out.

Errr, ENJOY!

Here we go again. 2 redundancies in 14 weeks. Perhaps it qualifies for the Guinness Book of Records. Feeling quite special to have been chosen twice.

CHAPTER ONE
MOOD; MURDERSOME

Forgive that I can’t remember the names of the conspirators bosses at Head Office, I had after all only been there 8 weeks. So for the purpose of this conversation, let’s just call them Backstab, Judas & Rat.

BACKSTAB: Does anyone else have a niggling feeling that we had something important to sort out?

JUDAS: No. Could you pass me a Jaffa Cake?

BACKSTAB: Sure, there you go. It’s just I can’t help thinking there’s some left over business down in Loyal Town, something we were supposed to deal with 7 months ago. Anyone?

JUDAS: Nope. Got nothing. Ooh, those Jaffas are good, pass me another.

RAT: I know what it is. We were told that we needed to relocate Store 1, but because we opened Store 2 we never got round to it and then just never bothered.

BACKSTAB: Ah! Yes, that’s it! Right, well, bit too late to relocate Store 1 as it needs to be done by Tuesday next week. That only gives us 6 days. Shall we just shut it down?

JUDAS: Good plan. That means we don’t have to actually do any work or difficult stuff and leaves me more time to polish off these Jaffa Cakes. I vote yes, shut it down.

RAT: I do see one minor problem though guys. If we close the store we have to get rid of the staff. Who’s going to tell them?

BACKSTAB: Not me!

JUDAS: Nor me! Let’s just not tell them, they’ll work it out come Tuesday.

RAT: Or we could get rid of the staff at Store 2, none of them have been there long and we don’t really like them anyway, even though they’ve kept the store going through a very difficult period without any training.

BACKSTAB: I hear they are currently top of the national leader board for our mystery shopper surveys. Yes, let’s get rid of them.

JUDAS: Hate to break this to you guys, but I’ve just heard from Store 1. The landlord has inadvertently sent them a copy of the letter that tells them they have to relocate by next Tuesday. I’ve ignored all their messages and questions; none of them important anyway, just stuff like ‘have they got jobs or not’, ‘how are they going to feed their children’ etc. etc. We could just leave them all to fight it out themselves. Like The Hunger Games! None of them will know who to trust, who will succeed or how it will end. And we won’t need to get our hands dirty or take any responsibility. What fun! Talking of Hunger, any more of them Jaffas left?

BACKSTAB: Brilliant plan. We’ll just stay low, keep quiet and pop our heads back up when the dust has settled.

RAT: One of them has just emailed me. Used big long words like ‘unprofessional’, ‘irresponsible’, ‘incompetent’, ‘Citizens Advice Bureau’. Ooops, I’ve accidentally deleted it. Well, I’m going to take the rest of the afternoon off so that no-one can contact me. Anyone else?

JUDAS: Great idea, me too. Let me just grab the rest of these……oh……who ate all them Jaffa Cakes?

Now, I was not a fly on the wall during this exchange, so I admit I do not know for sure if it was indeed Jaffa Cakes that were consumed or some other biscuit/cake based snack. However, the events described actually happened.

On the Wednesday our sister store rang us, alarmed and confused about an eviction letter they’d received. A subsequent flurry of phone calls, texts and emails were blanked by our Area Manager, Human Resources (remember the Harpy?) and Head Office as a whole.

On the Thursday, Head Office turned up. They paid lip service to the whole ‘relocation’ issue and left without offering us any update, forward plan or reassurance. We were all desperately concerned that the Store 1 employees were about to lose their jobs.

Only 17 days before, me and my partner had finally exchanged contracts for our very own home. But it wasn’t excitement that I felt in the pit of my stomach, it was panic.

Tune in to Easter Redundancy Diary #2 for what happened next…….

If you are employed or otherwise content and stable with your work/life/domestic situation, please pop over to Wanted. Not Wanted. where you can have a smug, self-righteous, cosy giggle at my crumbling self-esteem. You’ll find my self-initiated Job Club, my ridiculous misguided applications for ANY kind of work and my redundancy diary, a revealing look into the day to day life of the lowlife worthless pits of humanity the unemployed. If you are not content and stable with your work/life/domestic situation, then let’s hold hands and stick our tongues out at the rest of the world. But you still have to go read all the stuff.