I started a consulting business with my dad in 2021. We were growing well for the first 18 months. In about 2022 we saw a HUGE decline in the industry. Many of our competitors went out of business. Some shrank by 75% or more. We lost $250k in 2023 and the actual drag was our leadership team. So I, along with 2 other leaders, were laid off at the end of last year. I am proud to say we did not lay off any staff. I got a job at a giant company that pays me a shit ton to do the job of a monkey. I hate it there.
I was working up in Whistler back in my twenties, at the end of the season, they lay everybody off except for a small crew of full-time employees. I went on to EI(employment insurance) for the summer pretended to look for jobs, and went on road trips with friends. Once summer finished, I found another job and I have unfortunately been employed ever since in various Warehouse jobs from order picker to warehouse manager.
I thought those were skiing or biking or local terms I just didn’t know since I’ve never being skiing or to Whistler, haha. I read EL rather than ei like thinking it was referring to a place everyone from that area would know that started with those letters. This makes much more sense now.
There were a bunch of closed door meetings with upper management and the busy season was set to end in a few weeks, so the writing was on the wall.
I had some of the most consistently highest metrics so I went into our VP of Operations office and straight up asked if I would be let go on X date. He told me no.
To be fair, he kept his word. About 70% of the staff were let go on that date. I was let go 2 days after that.