Three or four weeks ago I was offered a job - an eight month contract with Procter and Gamble - with more than a little help from a recruitment agency.
P&G seemed happy enough with me after the telephone interview. They wanted an EDI specialist to work on an EAI to SAP conversion. I have 15 years worth of EDI knowledge gathered in a whole range of different environments on a number of different platforms.
I actually worked on the project to set up the EDI system for them on EAI in 2006. That is not something that I remember with any great happiness (the management of the project left something to be desired, and my own performance did not always survive the stress involved as it should have). I have though, again, proved my resilience and potentially enormous talents on a couple of projects since.
I know EDI extremely well. SAP, I indicated during the telephone interview, I know at a basic level (some of the modules required, mainly in order processing) and that was about it.
During the interview, that fact was accepted. Nobody complained. They proceeded to offer me a contract, which I duly signed (and which I presume they also signed). I did not sign it, incidentally, without reading it - these days I do not make that sort of mistake.
On March 28th, I turned up for a one-day introduction/training course/onboarding session. The first lasted 40 minutes, the last 20, the middle bit (the training course - much of which I already knew) some 7 hours. Not much time to make anything of an impact! Or show what I could do. I am generally a very shy, self-conscious individual (as I get older I revert more and more to introversion), and do not try to be overly positive, though I will also stay polite and, if given a chance, to show off my deep intellect (my one great strength), I will.
I said very little that I had not said during the telephone interview. Maybe there were a few nervous, hardly offensive, jokes in there, I cannot recall (I had to deal with three people - a German guy, a Polish lady, and an Italian man - all spoke English, but only as a second language, so getting any jokes might have been difficult for them, or so it appears in retrospect).
Everything seemed in order, nobody showed a great deal of concern, I gave them all my personal email and telephone data. They in turn were due to send me project documentation that I could study. I was due back today for a couple of days more training and then I was expected to start full-time on Monday.
Last Friday afternoon I received a telephone call from the agent, who found me this position, indicating that P&G were cancelling the contract with immediate effect. He was confused to say the least, but indicated that they had made noises about "technical incompetence" on my part.
This is, by any stretch of the imagination, ludicrous. They saw me for all of one day, I never sat down in front of a computer, I never even once looked into their system. How can I be, in such circumstances, technically incompetent?
Maybe they took references from HP about the project in 2006? They did not ask me for them, or advise me that they were doing so, and anyway that should have been done before the contract was signed. And the references would not have indicated total incompetence.
Two other possibilities remain.
Firstly they suddenly realised that the in-depth SAP knowledge was not there as it stands (given my approach to working, I would have made sure that I had, in my own time, covered a lot of bases on the missing areas before actually starting the project - and in Norway in 2007 I had worked on a project using Webmethods, which I had never before seen in my life. That project was a great success, as references would have shown!), and it was more significant than they had previously realised.
Maybe this is the case, but again they should not have signed the contract without taking full account of this, and anyway it might have made sense for them to give me at least one month to prove a point.
Second alternative is that they have budget problems. They are due, according to the contract, to make a severance payment if they end the contract early. If they can prove "technical incompetence", they might be able to reduce the amount or avoid paying it entirely.
Whatever the case may be, they have left me in a difficult, if not impossible, situation. Assuming I get the maximum severance payment (which is very unlikely, given the shenanigans going on - I do not think that they have acted at all honourably to date, so why should they on this matter?), it will bind me over for a few weeks.
There are practical issues involved here though. I cannot express the great joy that I felt when I got myself on the unemployment line. As I have to be covered for medical insurance on a 365 day a year basis following my heart attack in 2008, I can only allow myself so much time before re-registering as unemployed, no matter how much they give me. This frankly I do not want to do under any circumstances, and the chance of another job coming along quickly? As a quirk of timing I turned down two interviews after I got the P&G offer came in. Those opportunities have gone. There is one unlikely iron in the fire, and then .... nothing much again.
I am facing a severe financial crisis as it is. I agreed to a 10-Euro a month increase in the service offered by Deutsche Telekom (which would allow us a television connection), based upon this job coming in. It may sound a trivial amount, but my wife is furious about it (yes, her reaction does appear over the top), and wants me to cancel it, which will be very difficult to do - more stress that I do not need.
Without the prospect of another job coming in, the insult about my technical abilities, and the growing stress with my wife over a number of financial issues (I understand her concerns - it is not her fault and I still love her), I have started to get, to put it bluntly, suicidal.
There seems little point in continuing, I am fed up with the constant battles with an increasing level of poverty, I have lost faith entirely in the way that companies conduct business, my future looks extremely bleak - what is the point of just surviving - particularly if I am dependant upon the state for my existence?
If I survive the next 48 hours, I will survive anything. At my age, I need something positive to happen to prove that there is something left to fight for - whatever it may be. As of the last two days, I cannot see anything even remotely positive happening, accordingly .... One less person on this overcrowded, overpopulated planet will hardly be missed, and in economic terms, my disappearance would be one (admittedly small) liability less to consider.
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