Things change when you stand up for yourself or something you believe in against people who are used to getting their way. The contract they give you doesn’t have your exact wage, no ones does. The rest they pay in other ways but what happens when you get fired, I wasn’t the first or the last. The power they hold against the employées that they know won’t dispute or fight in court. The niceties of the start of the last conversation were forgotten. They refused to make a counter offer and went radio silent. Email silent. I was on my week of holiday to spend time with my family and celebrate my, Laura and my brothers birthday without my wage or holiday pay. It was not how I planned to spend my week in Ireland, sending emails and checking my bank account. Was this part of their strategy? Get me accept an offer that was less than two months pay after working there for nearly two years? (I was a week away from two years) Did that play into it too? A contract after two years entitles you to more. Either way they thought I would give in, they thought I would walk away and let them get away with another mishandled sacking. Throughout my time at the company I had seen and heard and been talked to about people get sacked from my employer. Two people in particular were always on the list and I fought for them to keep their job, they did their job but they didn’t fit into their idea of how you should be in the company and they knew I didn’t either.
They involved me in meetings where they would ask for my opinion and expressing the truth I was always saying what they didn’t want to hear. They wanted to open lunch, I didn’t think it was a good idea. They wanted to open seven days a week, same. They wanted to start using Uber Eats- I strongly disagreed. Those are only a handful. The list goes on. They talked to me, I told them what I thought and it was clear we didn’t see things the same way.
A week after I was back in Lisbon they wrote to me to say they wanted to meet me in the laywers office where I was fired and to bring my lawyer. I had no reason to get a lawyer involved at this point. Nor could I afford one but they knew that. They were calling my bluff. They fired me, they wanted to pay me off, for me it was simple- make me a counter offer to my offer. The communication went silent again as they hatched their new plan, they had another lawyer working for them, the partner of the one who was in the room when they fired me. I needed money to pay the due rent, a friend got me a job cooking for a family for two weeks. One night on the train back home i recieved a email from a personal address and not the company saying we won’t pay you what you think you deserve - we’ve been speaking to the staff and one or two of them have complained about your behaviour. No clear indication of who or what has been said. My conscience was clean, I had nothing to hide. She thought that the could dig some dirt on me for what? Telling people when they were meant to be in the kitchen, for making people make up for the times they were late by coming in early. If you were half an hour late - you came in half an hour early the next shift. In their day to day business they were late and they excused or didn’t pay attention to the tardiness but I did. We as a team worked hard and its only respectful to turn up on time. This email was another way to slow down the procedure and try and make me crack. I replied and waited for answer.
The next answer I got was a letter from the laywer saying they were firing me as I hadn’t shown up to work for the last two weeks. The rule is three strikes and your out not one but they threw the ball the wrong way. I asked one of the chefs to send me the schedules for the last three weeks and on the first week (my last week working there was my name and the two weeks after my name was replaced by someone else). They didn’t see this coming. I replied with an offical document with the last three weeks rotas printed. The one thing they tried to hold over me was ineffective, they had offically published the schedules without my name and then tried to use this. Do you see what I was dealing with?