It was November 2011; I was ready to take advantage of my company's accrued and approved 30-day vacation, and was well ahead in my quarterly productivity goals as a workforce development specialist. Therefore, I gleefully clicked the “send” button of an e-mail reminding my colleagues not to refer any new clients for another month.
The executive director, in a rare person-to-person e-mail, asked where I was going—this time. With excitement, I responded with Miami, Lima, and Caracas. She again followed up with a comment that hinged on sarcasm, and even some jealousy. My logic strongly dictated that no way could she be jealous! She is the executive director of my company; she can afford her own trips!
In reality, I thought that I was impressing her, not only with my work-performance, but also by spending my vacations in Latin-America improving my Spanish and experiencing Latin-American culture, and thus, better serving my company’s Spanish-speaking clientele. After all, one of the reasons I was hired in the first place was because of my ability to speak Spanish.
However, there was some discussion among members of my predominately black travel group, Nomad-ness Travel Tribe, stating that it is not a good idea to talk so extensively about your travels in the workplace. It can cause some hard feelings because you are living your dreams and others aren’t. This, I must confess, is where I’m guilty as sin. One of my co-workers stopped speaking to me altogether. It's not that I was bragging about my travels, but overflowing with excitement and anticipation. Even my office was filled with pictures, currency, and artifacts from the countries that I’ve visited.
An African-American CEO who himself, at one time, experienced a nasty termination from a job, is in agreement with my travel group. He pointed out that my company’s management may have been wondering where this n… (expletive) get the means to do all of this traveling. Wow, I could have told them if they had only asked! I know how to shop for cheap air fares. In fact, I wrote a blog article entitled, Enjoy Travel without Being Wealthy. The cost of my round trip tickets to Miami, Lima, and Caracas from San Francisco was a total of only $917.
Unfortunately, two months after my trip, I was terminated from my job. Did this have anything to do with the jealousy that I may have naively and inadvertently incurred? Who knows? The formal reason given was the result of “one” honest mistake that I made in my four years with the company. Although, I certainly do not condone or defend the error, my intentions were pure, and I was expecting a strong reprimand, or at worst, a write-up. However, the reason given publicly for my termination was that my position was being “restructured” due to downsizing, which made more sense because I was never replaced. Meanwhile, the vacation time of the remaining employees have been cut. Hmmmm.
0 comments:
Post a Comment