The first thing he said was, “I didn’t know they were going to do this to you.” I asked him what he meant, and he admitted the requisition had been opened in February, two months before my position was supposedly eliminated. He had been told not to mention it because management wanted me to leave without asking questions. I reminded him that I had trained him in 1991 and spent years teaching him everything he knew about that department. He said he remembered, and then told me the company had offered him my position before they ever told me mine was being eliminated. He sounded ashamed when he said it.
I asked whether he had accepted it knowing I was still working there. He said he had, because management told him the role was being reorganized and that I would be retiring soon anyway. Then he sent me a copy of the original requisition. My exact title was on it, along with the same responsibilities, salary range, and reporting structure I’d had for years. The only difference was the name they planned to put on the door. I took the document to an attorney, who told me to request my complete personnel file and every document connected to the restructuring. When the company received that request, HR suddenly stopped answering my calls.
Three weeks later, they offered me a settlement and asked me to sign an agreement saying I had voluntarily left. I refused because I hadn’t volunteered for anything. My attorney showed them the February requisition and the job posting from June, both proving my position had never actually disappeared. The company eventually paid me additional severance and corrected the reason for my termination. The man I trained kept the job, but he later told me he had refused the promotion once he understood what had happened. After thirty-eight years, the hardest part wasn’t losing my job—it was discovering they had chosen my replacement before they ever found the courage to tell me I was being replaced.
