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A major promotion after five years of hard work should feel like proof that all that effort finally paid off. For one employee, it instead became an incredibly expensive reminder of just how quickly a company can change course.
According to his wife, her husband had spent years building an exceptional record at his company, earning top performance scores, customer compliments and enough trust to take on responsibilities beyond his position. Then came the opportunity he’d been working toward: an account manager role with a 50% raise.
He signed the offer, prepared to leave his fully remote position and even used the couple’s savings to purchase the car he’d need for his new field-based role. But shortly before he was supposed to start, the promotion was suddenly delayed. Within weeks, he was accused of “work avoidance,” locked out of his systems and ultimately fired—leaving the couple without his income and with a car they say they only purchased because of the job he’d already been promised.
You mean nothing to your company. From a promised promotion to sudden termination within weeks (after purchasing a car for new promised role)
My husband has been working at the same company for 5 years in customer/tech support.
He had incredible metrics, the highest call scores on his team, the most customer compliments on his team, the best possible end of year review (his supervisor literally had to get permission from HR to give him such a high score), and zero record of any write ups or disciplinary record.
He was the only person on his team cross-trained in every department, and was regularly trusted to handle high level management style tasks.
Sounds pretty important.
Most of their days are spent in a call queue, but a mandatory part of their job is also to maintain a support email inbox to assist customers who email in for help.
Last month he interviewed for and was offered a massive promotion to account manager with a 50% base pay increase. He signed his offer letter and immediately began preparation for the new role. He was going from fully remote, to working exclusively in the field so we cashed out out savings to purchase him a car required for the position.
On his final shift, he was notified by his soon-to-be-supervisor that she was told his promotion was delayed for 4 weeks without explanation. He requested to discuss this with corporate but was ignored. He had no choice but to just finish his final weeks before the new role, but was very frustrated and burned out, for obvious reasons.
Woooof.
Then, almost 2 weeks into him waiting for his start date, he was contacted by someone he never met in corporate who accused him of “work avoidance” for taking short 10 minute breaks from call queue the following week.
The example they showed him was one day in which every couple hours he would hop out of queue for a few minutes at a time.
During these breaks, he was still sending emails and attending to other duties, he was just managing his frustration and burnout as best he could to not take it out on customers on the phone. He was then promptly shut out of all of his systems and placed on leave pending an “investigation.”
That sounds almost illegal.
Well, today they called and fired him. Told him they will not be providing him any of his records as now his entire personnel file is part of the “investigative documents” and are private.
Again, all of this transpired with no warnings or corrective action EVER in his history.
And now the savings nest egg we had been working on for years is totally depleted because we invested in what we thought was going to be a great move for his career.
How awful.
F*** corporations. F*** at-will states. Fuck capitalism.
You can work your ass off and grind for years and in return you get royally fucked.
Not only am I terrified for our financial future, but I am hurt seeing how hurt he is. He worked SO hard and was SO excited for the promotion. It felt like finally after years of bullshit, his talents were finally being recognized. And now this.
Commenters were sympathetic to the couple’s situation, but the responses weren’t entirely convinced that the termination came completely out of nowhere.
Many agreed that the timing looked suspicious. Going from a signed promotion and glowing employment history to an investigation and termination within weeks raised plenty of eyebrows, particularly when the couple had made a significant financial decision based on the new role. Readers encouraged them to save the signed offer letter, performance reviews, messages about the delayed start date and anything else documenting the sequence of events.
At the same time, others pushed back on describing the 10-minute periods outside the call queue as ordinary “breaks.” In a call-center environment where availability can be closely tracked, repeatedly taking oneself out of the queue without approval could potentially violate policy—even if he was still answering emails and doing other work. Some commenters suspected there might be more behind the investigation than OP knew or that the company had interpreted his activity very differently.
Still, plenty of readers questioned why an employee with five years of strong performance apparently went straight from no disciplinary history to termination rather than receiving a warning or corrective action. Others suggested the couple look into unemployment benefits and speak with an employment attorney if they believe the signed offer and subsequent financial reliance could be legally relevant.
Whatever ultimately happened behind the scenes, commenters agreed on one painful lesson: even an excellent track record and a signed promotion aren’t necessarily the job security they feel like they should be.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a company that didn’t expect their work-from-home policy to result in better time off benefits for their employees.
This person shares OP’s sentiment.
This person says this is far too common.
And this person says loyalty is a one-way street.
Nothing says “congratulations on the promotion” quite like a new car payment and no job to drive to.