26-Year Employee Gets Laid off Years Before Retirement Because he Can't Uproot to a New State

Author image for Emmy Pratt
Emmy Pratt • Writer and Editor
Aug 26, 2023 8:00 PM EDT

When you're young, it's so easy to get a new job, move to a new city, and start a new life. Well, it's not necessarily "easy," but when you don't have a family, a partner, a mortgage, or a lot of possessions, the choice to move somewhere for a job gets a lot simpler. Getting a new job in itself is easier when you're young. If you've got a round face and graduated college after 2010, people look at you like a ball of potential they can mold and hold onto for many years. Things get a lot harder if you're finding a job when you're a decade out from retirement. Hiring managers see people in their 50s as a liability, even though discrimination based on age is technically illegal. One older man recently got laid off from his company of 26 years, and his son took to Reddit to share his story. 

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  • 01
    Font - r/antiwork u/itworker8675309 - 13h my father was just laid off after 26 years at his company
    via u/itworker8675309
  • 02
    Font - My father worked for a major telephone company let's call it....oh I don't know, BS&S. He devoted everything to them for 26 years of his life. For those 26 years he had been working remote for 24 years. He thought he was going to make it until retirement. He always talked about how great the company was. I tried to warn him that the company did not care and it was only a matter of time until they threw him out. But he alway denied it saying that was a millennialsl cop out for hard work. T
    via u/itworker8675309
  • 03
    Font - planning to shutter everything in the state. the call centers, the data centers, even the business offices. 60,000 employees will now be basically competing for at most 20,000 spots. the math didn't work out for him and unfortunately he lost. he is to old to uproot and move but also not old enough to retire. I wanted to tell him "I told you so" but I knew now wasn't the time. I guess the only thing I can say is be ready alot of major companies will be using this "return to office/centrali
    via u/itworker8675309
  • 04
    Font - VentingID10t. 11h My dad got one slightly below-standard performance review and felt it was highly unjust and wrong. He had several years of great performance and this was out of the blue. My mom encouraged him all weekend to write HR stating he disagreed with it. So he did and drafted his dispute stating all the work he did the past year and that he even saved the company lots of money. That typed letter was sent by certified mail (pre internet days) first thing in Monday morning to HR.
    via u/itworker8675309
  • 05
    Font - Later that week, he and several others were told they were being let go with a severance package due to centralizing the entire company. It was a shock! The worst thing was, he was 1 year from being able to get his pension money, so he was going to lose a couple hundred thousand. That's a large amount now, let alone in the late 1980s.
    via u/itworker8675309
  • 06
    Font - If it wasn't for his certified letter disputing his bogus performance review being sent in PRIOR to being told he was getting let go, he wouldnt have had a case to fight that. The company ended up giving him his pension after a lot of legal fights. It tore him to pieces though. He felt so loyal to them and so betrayed.
    via u/itworker8675309
  • 07
    Font - I hate PPG to this day. My dad got another job but he wasn't ever himself again. They stressed him to the max. He died from a heart attack a few years afterwards. I blame PPG and their corporate games for sucking the life out of him. He was a Naval Commander who served his country and busted his butt for a company that treated him terribly in the end. Absolutely disgusting what happens out there.
    via u/itworker8675309
  • 08
    Smile - NEVER EVER expect a thing from a company. They don't care - none of them. Some just pretend better than others. I'm so sorry your father is going through this BS&S BS too. ... ← Reply 605
    via u/itworker8675309
  • 09
    Font - Gees-Mill 13h ● My father retired from the deathstar back in 2020. I left there in 2004 after 9 years. When it was good I would have tattooed the logo on my forehead. I loved it. Took a management job and then it was over shortly after that. Employees are just numbers. There is no loyalty to employees, so why should an employee be loyal to an employer? Reply 3.6k
    via u/Gees-Mill
  • 10
    Font - Time for a friendly reminder that among other things AT&T. ● ● _-Smoke-_. 5h ● actively encourages agents to load up seniors with services they don't need because it's too hard for them to recognize they're being scammed or figure out how to cancel. frequently tries to restrict access to union representatives and hide information from new- hires would rather rearrange service tiers to only require quality up to the next lowest tier in order to avoid proper line maintenance and quality • a
    via u/_-Smoke-_
  • 11
    Rectangle - ktappe • 12h 1 Award 3 This is how companies commit age-ism legally. They tell people the age of your dad that they have to uproot their entire lives and move to a different state, knowing c d well the employees can't/ won't do it. Thus they are culled, cannot sue for discrimination, and the company gets to hire all new workers for half the wages. ... Reply 2k
    via u/ktappe
  • 12
    Font - Irishf0x 11h ● Or they just do it blatantly and without any concern for legality because fines don't hold companies accountable. My Mom worked for Sprint for 3 decades as one of their top performing program managers.. '-mobile buys Sprint, shuts down their networks to cut costs and monopolize, then fired the top 20% and bottom 20% wage earners. Basically the oldest and newest. I wish the greatest of misfortune on every C-Class and board of directors of all corporations. Absolute scum and
    via u/Irishf0x
  • 13
    Font - UrBum_MyFace_69. 12h It's not a well thought out opinion I have but I feel the stock market is to blame for a lot of ills in society. People are "Investors" so companies don't care about their employees, don't care about their customers, care about one thing - the bottom line for their INVESTORS. Nothing else matters. If they can axe an employee that is a year or two from retirement after devoting decades to that company, they would do it in a millisecond if it meant increased stock value
    via u/UrBum_MyFace_69
  • 14
    Rectangle - bluehunger 100% correct. And they'll tell you that if you watch any of the business channels. ● 11h ... 259
    via u/bluehunger
  • 15
    Font - The_Alex 6h ● It's literally like one of the first concepts they explain in a business major. I got a Business Administration minor and I think it was like the second chapter of the intro to management course that explained that CEOs seek to maximize short term profits for the shareholders and increase the companies stock value. If they fail to do so adequately then the board simply fires the CEO and hires a new one that will hopefully seek to maximize short term profits and increase the
    via u/The_Alex
  • 16
    Font - ChChChillian • 12h My grandfather worked for Exxon -- but it was Esso in his day and that's what he always called it. With just an 8th grade education he had worked his way up from the bottom and was a manager at what was then the largest refinery on the East Coast.
    via u/ChChChillian
  • 17
    Font - Then they bought a computer, and some wiseass had the idea to match everyone's jobs against their qualifications. That's when they found there was man who had never even attended high school in a job requiring a bachelor degree at least. Never mind. that he had been promoted to that position out of sheer merit and had been serving them well for years; now he had to get out. They offered him the choice of either returning to a job out on the lines -- when he was in his 60s and had been doi
    via u/ChChChillian
  • 18
    Font - Somehow he was a company man to the end though. I learned this from my dad because Grandpa never complained about it once. He even told a story about the time he had saved the refinery from burning down because when a fire broke out he was the only one who knew the location of the valve that needed to be shut off. That got him like a $20/week bump in pay that he apparently felt followed him until his last day on the job. An absolutely trivial sum compared to what he had saved them, but he
    via u/ChChChillian
  • 19
    Font - StandupJetskier • 12h The Company Man was a thing. To be fair, most companies gave you a job with benefits and a lot of your social status was from who you worked for. IBM folks, Beemers, were respected. I had a grandfather who was...an executive with Celanese. When people got promoted it ran in the local papers. Along with a "work day", "personal life", "toll quality phone calls" and "lunch hour", Company man is gone. Today, text and email 24/7 and 1099 nonsense. 449
    via u/StandupJetskier
  • 20
    Font - ChChChillian • 12h It's true that he had a pension and other good benefits. Now that I think about it, I wonder if returning to a union position would have cut his pension more than early retirement did, and if that factored into his decision. (He's not around to ask, and since my dad is now north of 901 doubt he remembers the details.) I do know Grandpa ended up getting a job at a different company in a completely different industry where he stayed for the rest of his working life. Still
    via u/ChChChillian
  • 21
    Font - HomeRun2020 - 12h Man, labor laws are ....You can bash countries like France, Belgium or Germany all you want but this is an area but they slam dunk on us...Over there, it would take a lot to get rid of a an employee going into their 26th yr like OP dad. I'm sorry and wish good luck to your pops. ... Reply 502
    via u/HomeRun2020

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getting fired workplace-stories-reddit antiwork workplace-stories firing jobs on the job fired toxic-workplace job job hunt bad jobs work laid off workplace reddit thread
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