I am being Quiet Fired: What would you do?

November 11, 2023 8:56 AM

I work for a tech firm that recently had 30% of their workforce laid off. I am the VP of Sales and didn't get let go, but after the layoffs, 90% of my responsibilities were given to my direct report. Since then, said direct report works directly with the CEO and I have been disinvited from several meetings and no longer connected to the team. I have a sizable severance package that would have been given to me if I had gotten laid off. Instead, it looks like they want me to quit. How would you handle this?

I have been the VP of sales at this company for three years. I lead a 15 person team. I have gotten promoted three times in three years. We hired our director of sales last year because the CEO is friends with him and they belong to the same religious organization.

After the layoffs happened, this person has been distant and no longer acts as my direct report.

I have an employment contract that states that I can get my severance with either 1) A demotion 2) Lay off.

I just got in touch with a lawyer but it is tough to keep myself together as I see myself about to get fired and I am being direspected on the way out. Looks like they are managing me by misery and hope that I quit.

Hive any thoughts on how to handle this?

posted by The1andonly to Work & Money (21 answers total)

Read up on Constructive Termination/ Demotion. Maybe get a lawyer to meet with you and HR to explain that they may be effectively terminating you without cause and that you will pursue severance if that happens, plus legal fees. Meanwhile, do your job effectively and calmly.
posted by theora55 at 9:05 AM on November 11, 2023 [15 favorites]

I got laid off in August with 5,000 other people. I was not as high on the work hierarchy as you, but other people who were laid off were.

For the previous year I had a boss that I bumped heads with a lot and wanted to quit (and I think she wanted me to quit) but I'm glad I didn't. I will be getting paid through January, and had access to my insurance for two months, which allowed me time to get all the medical treatments I had been putting off.

I fantasized about quitting because I also felt disrespected, and I still feel resentful sometimes that they "dumped" me first, but the practicalities of the separation agreement have made life easier for me.

I'm not sure if it's worth it to preemptively tell HR your legal strategy.
posted by girlmightlive at 9:17 AM on November 11, 2023 [9 favorites]

Yup, this has all the signs of a Constructive Dismissal.

Store all the documentation you have so far and going forth try to get things in email rather than verbally. Also, call an employment lawyer on Monday.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:20 AM on November 11, 2023 [10 favorites]

1. Document everything - every meeting you have been disinvited too etc. Keep copies outside your company’s ecosystem.

2. Gather all your good reviews, times you met your targets, positive feedback. Keep it all in your personal email/Dropbox/whatever.

3. I’m glad you have a lawyer.

4. Grieve but realize this is now a game of chess. The winning of this game involves money. There’s no personal stake left in it for you — like obviously you have feelings, but your time with this company is ending. End it in your favour by getting severance.

5. Activate your networks. Friends and family to remind you you are awesome and deserve better! Professional so that you can get your severance and then have a much better job.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:21 AM on November 11, 2023 [52 favorites]

Oh and sorry, if you don’t actually have the lawyer, get one ASAP.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:22 AM on November 11, 2023

Oh good, you get paid free time to jobhunt. Try to turn it that way in your head - these idiots are literally giving you money in exchange for not doing your job duties. (And lawyer up, especially if you're in any kind of discriminated minority. Different country, but a woman I know hit up her employer so hard for age discrimination when they did this to her the moment she became unfirable due to being close to retirement age. Paid off house kind of money.)
posted by I claim sanctuary at 9:26 AM on November 11, 2023 [32 favorites]

Hive any thoughts on how to handle this?

Let me state state the obvious. Don't quit.

Constructive dismissal is a thing. It is, however, difficult to prove, and will require a (costly) lawyer to prove. In addition, when you pay that lawyer, you will have no income - and you might not even get anything out of it. However, if you maintain your job, you either continue to have income to pay a lawyer, or you get actually terminated, which is significantly easier to negotiate for severance/unemployment benefits/etc.

Consider that you are getting paid essentially to do nothing. That means you have an opportunity to do almost whatever you want - do you want to turn your job into something else? Propose it! Do you want to do nothing at work and post on Ask Metafilter all day? Do it! Do you want to find another job? Do it, and have them pay you to do it, and then you can go to that job interview as an employed person which puts you in a radically better negotiating position than being unemployed.
posted by saeculorum at 9:30 AM on November 11, 2023 [25 favorites]

This exact thing happened to me - with the bonus that I was involved in interviewing my "replacement"! I just rode it out for a while and eventually was let go... with severance.
posted by nkknkk at 10:38 AM on November 11, 2023 [5 favorites]

A friend in a similar situation offered to go away quietly and save everyone a lot of paperwork, if they gave her an exit package that was substantially more generous than the severance she would have ordinarily received. They gave it to her.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 10:48 AM on November 11, 2023 [18 favorites]

these idiots are literally giving you money in exchange for not doing your job duties

Exactly this - take as much of their money from them as you can, first by getting it as salary while you don't do much, and then as severance.
posted by Ragged Richard at 10:54 AM on November 11, 2023 [10 favorites]

I would handle this by playing about 3,000 hours of Call of Duty on work time and waiting for them to fire me. DO NOT QUIT and give up the severance package unless directed to do so by an employment attorney with a game plan.
posted by DarlingBri at 11:07 AM on November 11, 2023 [10 favorites]

I have no experience in how this stuff works, but I'd just say from the tech side of things that it seems to me that the answers suggesting you use the time to search for another job or play games don't take into account the level of work surveillance possible these days. All of this could be monitored and used against you if you are on a work machine or work network.

If I was in this situation, my work computer would be pristine and never used for anything but work emails or projects. While at the office, I'd only use a browser on a privately owned cell that's not logged into the office network. Whatever job search or networking I'd be doing, I'd do at home on a privately owned machine.
posted by bluecore at 11:19 AM on November 11, 2023 [53 favorites]

OP you are getting a lot of bad advice above.

They are not constructively terminating you. They are not hoping you quit. They are hoping that you do or fail to do something that lets them fire you without paying your severance.

What you have to do is keep doing your job. Even with 10% of your responsibilities, you can (politely) order your direct report and other team members to meet with you to report on their activities at least as often as they formerly did and re-invite you to any meetings from which you have been dropped except at the CEO's express direction.

Continue to send all the regular memoranda and reports you usually send to whom you usually send them, unless expressly relieved from those responsibilities.

If there are accounts you still personally cover, continue to do the things you do to cover them (meetings, evenings out, etc.).

If the above can't fill a 9-5 day, start a new project ("Sales Strategy 2024") and have anyone who is still your direct report work on it.
posted by MattD at 11:47 AM on November 11, 2023 [56 favorites]

They are not constructively terminating you. They are not hoping you quit. They are hoping that you do or fail to do something that lets them fire you without paying your severance.

Firing for cause takes many months and does not involve purposely hobbling the employees' ability to perform their job responsibilities. Even in at-will states the process is fraught.

Agreed, however, that if you want to prove constructive dismissal you'll need to make a good faith effort to survive in the new regime. If nothing else it will provide more of a trail of you being blocked.

An employment lawyer will know more. I specify employment lawyer instead of just "lawyer" as you do need a specialist.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 2:08 PM on November 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

And by the way, the reason to pursue this as constructive dismissal is not because you think it will ever get to court. It's that the cost of defending themselves will have to be balanced against just paying your severance and being done with you. So dot all the i's and cross all the t's, but don't get too attached to the idea of legal revenge.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 2:13 PM on November 11, 2023

Response by poster: Hi guys and @MattD. Great advice.

The one thing about doing my job effectively (or whatever it is left). Is that since the change has been made, my former direct report has become antagonistic (I had denied him a promotion before all of this happened)

Now he is actively blocking me and doesn't respond to my messages.

I hired an employment lawyer on Friday but haven't started actual work. The messages here are truly helping with a course of action (and to reduce legal bills by doing some of the work myself)
posted by The1andonly at 3:02 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

great job lawyering up. lots of good advice up thread about not quitting. if you need a little mantra to chant silently to yourself while smiling through it, a nice one to try is "rest and vest!"

let the little power monger preen about and fling himself against the wall. If he's not your report anymore, try to enjoy a sort of not my circus, not my monkeys feeling and watch the cookies crumble.
posted by wowenthusiast at 3:26 PM on November 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

Ugh, what a jerky way to treat you on the way out the door.

You've already gotten some excellent advice here. I agree that you need to look at this through a purely business lens (as much as you can) and recognize that you are actually in a position of some power. Dismissing someone for cause can be very difficult and expensive for employers, even more so if you are a member of a protected group (eg. due to age or gender), and they will be thinking about the bottom line.

In the meantime, though, go through the motions of trying to do your job, and be sure to document any roadblocks, e.g. "Dear boss, I seem to have been dropped from today's TPS planning meeting, so instead I am presenting you with XYZ info here.... If my attendance is still expected at these meetings, please ask your assistant to reinstate me on the invitation..." If your direct report is no longer responding to your messages, send him a reminder and copy your boss. If neither of them respond to that, send another and add "I'm copying Boss here for his awareness as I will be unable to complete [your normal task] in the absence of a response from you."

Of course, they won't like that, but the purpose of documenting everything is not to change their behaviour, but to make it obvious that you are trying to perform your tasks in good faith and they are acting like jerks. It will also prevent them from being able to say that you stopped working.

The most important thing is to take care of yourself in all this. Once you document your efforts, drop the issue. The next move is up to them, and none of this has anything to do with you or anything you have done or can do.
posted by rpfields at 3:34 PM on November 11, 2023 [13 favorites]

Is the director still formally your direct report? If so, blocking you is gross insubordination. Walk into the GC’s or head of HR’s office and initiate discipline. Failing to do so is actually failing to do your job. If I found out one my executives was blocked by a subordinate and doing nothing about it, my executive would be in more trouble than the subordinate for sure.

Please do not believe it takes a long time to fire you for cause. That may be true for cogs in the bureaucratic wheel. Senior executives are fired for (purported) cause very quickly - if cause exists to fire a senior executive, almost by definition it has to be done right away.

Please stop viewing this through a constructive termination filter. Have your lawyer explain what that is so you can see this is not what you’re dealing with.
posted by MattD at 7:00 PM on November 11, 2023 [12 favorites]

A friend in a similar situation offered to go away quietly and save everyone a lot of paperwork, if they gave her an exit package that was substantially more generous than the severance she would have ordinarily received. They gave it to her.
Whatever you do, DO NOT offer to go away unless a lawyer with specific employment experience tells you to. If you do this, your employer may well accept that as your resignation and wish you well on the way out the door.

Definitely speak to a lawyer as soon as you can and get a strategy in place. But you must continue to do your job 100% - doing anything else provides an easy opportunity to fire you. They are betting that they can wait you out and you'll leave before they have to do anything that involves severance pay and they're doing it because it's cheaper to keep paying you than to give you that golden handshake. Play their game and play to win, but play straight.
posted by dg at 2:53 PM on November 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

I agree with the interview and mess around strategy but only if you have work from home opportunities. Definitely don't do that kind of stuff in the office on your work device.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:01 AM on November 13, 2023 [1 favorite]