Poetic Justice

The year was 1994, when rampant power outages were normal day to day occurrence in the Philippines. We have adjusted our time with our US counterparts, that is why we reported for work every night instead of every morning. It was tough and it became more unbearable with the constant blackouts. I was on my third year as Design Engineer and working under the PCB Design and Schematic capture group, when I first tasted the firing squad "corporate style".

It was almost midnight, and we are all preparing for our meal when the Operations Manager asked me to report to his office. The manager slightly briefed me on the impact of the blackouts on Philippines economy and how it is ruining our design business with US. He lectured me on the whys and hows of engineering economics and to cut a long story short, I got fired. I got kicked out dramatically because I lost my job on the eve of my birthday and 3 months before my wedding day. The Operations manager singled me out because of the fact that I was the new guy in the group and the least experience among my peers, and to put it simply, it means my over all value was considered the lowest among the engineers.

I begged him to reconsider, citing a lot of reasons, including my upcoming wedding, but my pleadings landed on deaf ears. I got up and went out of our office under a moonless night, so dark and dreary, in my heart,lies a very strong feeling of anger and revenge, in the hope that one day, the situation will be reversed and that hopefully they will feel what I was feeling that night.

Three years have passed, and I have moved on and survived the onslaught of retrenchment. I was a Senior engineer in a multi-national engineering company in Saudi Arabia. During that time, there was a construction boom in the Middle East we had a lot of vacancies in our engineering department, then in a freak twist of fate, my British boss asked me to interview applicants for a certain project in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The interviews went well, some of the guys were really good and I had a great time talking to them. On the third day of the job interviews, one of the applicants caught my eye, I came nearer and have that second look to make sure, I can't believe it, it was like surreal. I laughed hard after a few seconds of shock, the applicant is my former Operations Manager. I really can't explain the look on his face. I shook his hand firmly and said "justice prevails, it always does". He immediately left the office voluntarily. Sweet poetic justice.

Learn more about this author, master jedi bong.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

---

Add your voice

Know something about Testimonials: Humorous stories from of job loss and unemployment?
We want to hear your view. Write now!