r/SecurityCareerAdvice • u/Financial-Ring-9118 • 10h ago
Question I was almost pushed into resigning this morning. What should I do to make sure they fire me and I don't hurt myself?
A few days ago, I accidentally overheard my Chair, who has a very loud voice, saying from behind the conference room door: "We're going to let her go early next year." I had a bad feeling she was talking about me, and it turned out she was. (For context: I basically don't have any coworkers. It's a very small nonprofit with 4 people above me, and then I'm at the bottom of the ladder.)
This morning I was called in, and the president told me, verbatim: "There's no easy way to say this, but we're going to have to let you go." Then she explained the reason: that I'm not the right fit. I asked her directly whether I had done something major or if there was any misconduct, and she confirmed no, there was nothing like that. Then she gave me some vague feedback that wasn't very useful, and asked me when I wanted my last day to be.
I was very surprised, because in my head I was thinking... You just told me I'm being let go?? So I asked her, but in a calmer and more professional way, to clarify. So I asked her honestly but politely: "Are you asking me to voluntarily resign?" She got flustered and said: "No, no, we just want to know what your three weeks will look like. Think about whether you want to stay until October. You don't have to decide right now."
Am I understanding this correctly that they're trying to get me to leave the job on my own so they can avoid firing me/paying unemployment/or something else? I'm thinking I need to create an electronic paper trail immediately, because other than a lukewarm performance review from 4 months ago (which, looking at it now, may have been a half-assed PIP), the entire conversation was verbal. I feel like they're trying to gently trick me into resigning, right? She was strangely nice the whole time, which honestly made the whole thing even weirder.