Laid off for Christmas

Long time since I last wrote.
It's been a year since then. I hear Christmas carols .. .people smiling , the typical gifts rush .. but Christmas cannot be as nice for me anymore. The magic is gone .. people still die around the holidays , jobs are lost and a lot of people suffer from depression around this time of the year.

Last year I lost my job on December 5th. Those were some of the worst holidays in my life.
I could not afford to buy Christmas gifts and the only thing I was interested in was getting a job. People went on to their jobs each day .. I went running in the park and returned home just to find no calls, no emails and no comfort .. People were asking me were I would spend my Christmas holiday .. Austria or Romania .. I was thinking about my bank payments.



I luckily found a job in January this year but my holidays were ruined. The weird thing is that I was contacted by the same company that fired me (or laid me off .. not much of a difference for me) to work for one of the first of their customers.. well I can't say I can afford the chance to be fired again so I only agreed to do a part-time gig (which they could not fit into their plans) because a company that fires somebody for Christmas is not a company you want to join for a long-time relationship (even as incompetent /lazy as I was).

Thinking about the pain I went through I will make a note that if I ever found a software company I have to be nice to my employees and never ever fire somebody for Christmas. A 100.000 Euros Christmas budget(bonuses and presents (as in laptops/smart phones/geek toys) will almost guarantee faithful employees for a long time).

The worst case of Fired for Christmas last year ended in a shooting at the company Christmas party .. thinking about it I was pretty upset and was even invited to my ex-company Christmas party .. it is good we do not have shotguns.
On the other hand the experience really changed me yes there won't be any Christmas magic from now on(I still worry every day before Christmas about being made redundant) and I will never have a truly happy Christmas but I will never leave my life in the hands of somebody I do not trust , somebody that with just two words can destroy your holidays.
Here is another guy that went through the same thing. No .. no Merry Christmas for him either. ..