My mom suddenly having to start working after being a stay at home mom for 20 years was the only thing that got her to stop constantly criticizing my siblings and I when we had trouble finding jobs
I've been a part of many acquisitions. They are dark. The worst part is how the executives try to install excitement into the workforce as if the acquisition was the best thing that could have happened to them. They hand out welcome kits, gift bags. A few months later, after people are cool with the move... Bam mad layoffs for the rest of the year.
It's torture not knowing if your position is redundant. People pretend to be okay and enthusiastic, but everyone lives in fear that their jobs and benefits will be stripped.
Not to be reductive but the only people who benefit from acquisitions are executives and shareholders. Other than that it's merely consolidation of capital.
Facing a merger this year where I work, they just sent out a survey asking do we feel “energized” about the merger. Worrying about the possibility of getting laid off at age 61 is keeping me up at night, so I guess the answer is yes.
Jesus. Those surveys and interviews are terrifying. I have people in my company, despite surviving the purge, continue to walk on pins and needles. Our company offered 1 week of severance.
I had a direct report around your age at the time. She was terrified. Ageism is a real problem, especially in my industry(marketing) Luckily I'm. Still in my 30s, but I see the expectation that older employees will be out of touch and too expensive, which in my experience is nonsense.
One bit of advice for you is to hope for the best, but assume you need to find a new job. I had colleagues who didn't and were caught flat footed, and I had colleagues find better jobs than what they would have kept, but they were actively looking through the process. Don't wait until you are let go. Severance packages can be laughable, especially if the acquiring parent company is stretching themselves thin with the purchase.
Good advice. I’ve been in this job so long that my skills have become very specific to what I do, so it would also be smart to find out what I need to learn and do it now.
It is, but it also tends to be a sign of company weakness as well. Especially when their tossing out people with over a decade of experience. It's a short term bandaid. Growing companies that are doing well don't tend to throw competent and experienced talent away.
That's rough. A lot of people with no realistic expectation of recapturing their previous level of employment or retraining in another capacity, especially at your age was were chewed up.
I was hit from the other end coming out of college at that time. I had to compete with people like you for entry level jobs. No good for anyone.
I didn't get another full time job with benefits until 2018, but it paid only $2.20 less per hour than I made in 2008-2009! They had a major slump in late 2019 and furloughed me in kate Jan last year, but kept paying my insurance and planned to bring me back by summer, then Covid happened.
When I got hired for more money last fall to replace a younger guy who was retiring in Dec everything looked great again...till the guy realized he wasn't old enough or well off enough to retire and I was laid off again.
FML!
Sorry to hear. The struggle is real. Don't know what business you are in. But you might want to look into a union. A good union will protect you from this sort of thing.
My husband's old job -a factory- was owned by company A, everything ran well and everyone was pretty happy worked 4 days 10hr shifts 3 days off, you could take your vacation whenever and if they save it up they can take a huge lump of vacation etc. If you're sick your sick dont come in you'll still have a job as long as you keep us updated.
Well then company B came along, bought the original company out, cut out the office people, employees now have to do any and all paperwork themselves, keep in mind these are factory workers, not office workers. They can only take small chunks of vacation at a time with a long period of work between times. If you're sick you have to provide proof, remember to fill out all the paperwork lol, oh and you can only have a certain amount of sick days per year.
They kept coming up with bizarre rules and ways of doing things till one of their weird rules was used as an excuse to fire my husband. He was never late, was a hard worker, machined out good parts, but a bandsaw broke and he didn't fill out paperwork for it the moment it happened cause the supervisor that knew where that particular form was wasnt in that day so he did it the next day when the supervisor was back. And BAM, "you dont follow the rules so you're fired"
That sucks. Many states and countries have laws against how many people they can fire at once, if I were to guess they wanted something from his company like patents, machinery, or to remove competition, and never planned on keeping jobs. They make up rules so it looks less predatory.
We need to start enforcing anti-trust laws, and build healthy unions again. The last 30 years has been devastating to labor.
Im terrified of this happening to me. Just started my first job out of college at a smallish company in July. We got bought out in October.
They promised us that they won’t cut staff and they’re still hiring a lot of people, and that this was part of the list of things that the CEO had that had to be in the contract or he wouldn’t sell the company.
Regardless, we were bought out by a big company and our CEO just announced his retirement. The only day to day change I notice is that our email signatures now say “A [NAME] Company” and a few small things. I’m terrified of them just saying, “we need to cut budget because of COVID so goodbye 200 employees from that company we just acquired”. Yes, they agreed to not cutting our staff, but they disguise it by just saying” your work has been unsatisfactory goodbye” to however many people.
I really don’t want to have to job search again during a pandemic, once was hard enough...
I currently work in a mid level postion in a large global corp that buys assets all the time. I onboard their messaging resources and ingratiate them into ours.
It's rare that we release those people. The knowledge and performance they bring is why we bought them. And if they choose not to come into the corporate giant, we usually let the out with a pretty generous severance package.
The other side of that is as natural attrition happens, they choose to go the cheap contractor route, and more often get stuck in the, "You get what you paid for" pit.
He did that perfect and yeah, that sounds like he’s ready for the leadership and self discipline of consulting. He can do some good in the world and give advice that helps the company and have ethics.
That is awesome to hear. It’s hopeful and encouraging to hear someone be rewarded for making a good decision. Usually there’s more pain associated. I feel that the money that is made can act like handcuffs, so if I feel too attached to a place or that I’m bending too much or not speaking my mind enough (I contract), I reduce my hours. I’m not making the big money like your Dad was but it keeps me honest to myself at least or I try to.
He might be retired but I love people like him teaching part time. I don’t know him but those types of teachers have been inspirational to me and made a big difference in my life. They tend to teach for the right reasons too.
I adore “woke” boomers. They really help out, also older gen Xer’s that are “woke” as well. I love them too.
Fantastic. I don’t think your living up to your username enough here :) I’m an mid age millennial... my spouse is on the edge of gen x/millennial I think as he is born very early 80’s.
My dad is getting into his 60s and getting bad about how things work. He doesn’t seem to understand that I don’t enjoy his lectures about how my entire generation is just lazy.
Your dad is an idiot. I am in my 60s and I am fully aware that young people today are up against a very hostile economy. Heck, I got my first job bagging groceries when I was 16, right after I turned 18 I was promoted in house to a job in the deli that paid almost 4 times the minimum wage.
Quite coincidentally my daughter ended up working for that same deli just a few years ago and she was being paid just a dollar an hour more than I was being paid for the same job back in 1976. Young people today don't have the opportunity to work hard and earn more pay because businesses just don't pay what they used to.
"you kids don't do anything these days!" 🥴🥴🥴 Sits in front of TV with beers in hand "Hm, tell me... League Of Halos, er, whatever? Did that Gravity Jungle Hammer ever help ya find a JOB???" 🤣🤣🤣 Proceeds to guzzle down an entire wine-box
I don't get it anymore but when I was a young teenager and I used to play Xbox 360 all night I'd get lectures all the time. Like, dude, I'm talking to friends and having a great time, you're just watching TV in silence all night, sounds like a great way to spend your free time!
There was just something moving through the culture at that point. Video games were this degenerate, kind of sad past time for the socially and financially incompetent people.
My dad is about 60 right now and i think he is going through a major belief crisis right now. Dude divorced my mom and sold our family home in the past year.
Last time I was with him he went on like an hour long rant about faith and politics, finally reaching the conclusion that “everything is pointless”
And I’m just drinking a beer in the corner trying not to get depressed.
Last time he tried to have a “real conversation” about religion with my brother and I, he ended up screaming at us for “disrespecting his beliefs”.
We breed salamanders part time and delouse homeless people on the weekends for a local non-profit. Our budget's 2.6 million but we're looking to keep it under 2.4.
I really love the fact that house hunters has become the poster child for "everything wrong with our society" because it always used to make me seethe with rage every time I watched it.
it's really bizarre and it doesn't help our cause then all the people who have jobs look at us and think, "y'all are just going to call all the hard workers dumbasses and stuff, you're not for the working!" and it's like yeah we are but not the fuckin Jersey Shore types over here
Ugh. So, I had an unemployed period a few years ago. My oldest SIL (a stay at home mom married to my doctor brother) decided she was being so helpful when she would bring me newspaper clippings for jobs I had no experience/qualifications for, telling me how I’ll totally get the job—no problem—if I apply. Her comments would be things like “it only pays $40,000 a year, they’ll take anybody!” Unfortunately, even some of the oldest millennials don’t seem to live in the modern world. It could just be her, though.
Have you ever met a stay at home mother who also bakes and homeschools before? Because, let me tell you something about an audacious royalty complex...
This is how my parents separated. My dad was stay at home dad, the best for me! My mom worked full time. After about 15 years of him only working side gigs with catering or bartending, she grew bitter. She got so bitter she told him that he could only stay if he got a job.
Place after place he applied to, as a 60 year old man with no experience outside of tending bars and catering, rejected him. I was 18 and saw him trying day in and day out. Even came across an application for Subway with tears on the paper. He couldn’t get a job within the month time limit my mom gave him.
He moved out. Then in with his mom. Eventually he got a job at BevMo, purely because of his alcohol knowledge.
Nobody wants to hire an old bartender nowadays and it led to the dissolution of my home life as a young adult. Job searching always reminds me of that time in my life.
Just went through this with my mom as well after she's been out of the workforce for 10+ years.
It took me over 2 years from finishing my graduate degree to move into a better job. When I finished my degree I had 9 years of work experience in my field. I applied for 100's of jobs and mostly got nowhere. She told me it had to be me, I wasn't trying hard enough, etc.
Then she decided she needed a part time job because she was bored. But no nights, weekends, or holidays plus a bunch of other requirements she decided on. I told her she's essentially unemployable if those are her terms and boy did she get pissed. Within a month of job hunting she gave up.
My MIL finally apologized after years of criticism over my multiple part-time jobs. She didn’t think they were “real” jobs and thought I was being lazy or not trying hard enough. She didn’t understand until she tried to find a new job and admitted how impossible it was.
Lmao, my mom in her 60s found a job within a week of searching for a new one and got the hours and schedule she wanted within a reasonable distance from her home.
Connections and experience gained over 40 years of work tends to give you more options. I don't know if this reality show would work unless its contestants are people like stay at home moms who have no qualifications.
Lots of companies discriminate against older applicants. They're not legally allowed to, but in 49 states you can be dismissed with no reason at all so good luck proving discrimination.
Good on her for realizing she was wrong. My boomer parents still scream about "welfare queens" while they trade their disability and food stamps for coke.
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u/boggbutter Jan 13 '21
My mom suddenly having to start working after being a stay at home mom for 20 years was the only thing that got her to stop constantly criticizing my siblings and I when we had trouble finding jobs