DEVISTATION

August 18th, 2006

Friday I was fired at the Porsche dealership. Needless to say it came as a complete and total shock to me. Sales have been down for several months and as of Friday we had yet to sell a single new car for the month, just two pre owned. At the beginning of the month the owner wanted my boss to fire the other salesman, but the Volkswagen manager came to his rescue and offered him a position at Volkswagen although I'm sure he doesn't intend to stay.
The pressure has been terrible, but we just haven't had quality people coming in the door and they do very little advertising. Bill, my boss, has been about to loose his mind and has been very afraid of loosing his job for several months. When the deal with the other salesman went down Bill said the owner had told him he'd considered having Bill go on the sales floor as a selling sales manager. Bill told me that they'd decided that wouldn't work because he wanted him to concentrate on parts and service because they've tanked as well. He told the other salesman a slightly different version saying he told the owner it wouldn't work, because he and I knew all the same customers. The owner has even been talking about adding another line along with Porsche. He's considering Alfa Romero, although I don't know why. They don’t even import cars to the United States.

Thursday morning they had a managers meeting, and Bill said the owner had said he was going to have to go down and sit in Bill's office for a week to see if he couldn't sell some cars and give Bill the week off. After the meeting the owner had with the Volkswagen manager he stayed in his office for over an hour and then he called Bill up to his office for about the same amount of time. When Bill came back he sat outside in his demo on his cell phone for over thirty minutes and when he finally came inside he was visibly shaken. I asked him if everything was all right and he said yes, but I could tell it wasn't.

Then around two hours later Volkswagen manager came over and went in Bill's office and shut the door and stayed in there for about forty five minutes. After that Bill came out and gave us the key to his office, which he does on his day off and said he was leaving for the day and would see us Saturday. I knew something bad was going on because Bill had told me the day before he was going to work bell to bell Thursday and work Friday which is his usual day off. He said John had told him to take the day off. The salesman who had gone over to Volkswagen had taken Thursday off, but he called me at 4:15 PM to tell me that someone in Volkswagen had text messaged him that Bill and I had both been fired. He refused to tell me who it was. Of course I panicked and began calling other people at the dealership to see if they knew where that had come from. They all assured me that that would never happen. Every one knows, although I don't think the owner does, that I've pretty much been doing all Bill's work for years. I order the cars, stock them in, keep the internet site updated daily and if you look at every single hang tag or sticker in any pre owned car on the lot it's in my hand writing. I move the battery charger from car to car on the showroom, and even the service and parts people come to me when they need help. I haven't taken a day off in seven years, or a vacation except to take three days off each year for my sales award trips. I work ten to eleven hours a day six days a week. The monthly news letter had just come out announcing my seven year anniversary at the dealership and that I was the top Porsche sales advisor for the month of July. They fired me eight days shy of my seven year anniversary. I just hope they don't cheat me out of my vacation pay. Of course they're not going to give me my trip to Germany I won as top salesman for the year, they already told me that.
I called Bill at home and he sounded very angry and said he was going to call the owner at the ranch and get to the bottom of things, and call me back. He never did and when I called him that night and Friday morning he never answered his phone, the chicken shit.

I went into work Friday two hours early, and when I tried to log on to my computer I was locked out. Soon afterwards I saw the Volkswagen sales manager and the Volkswagen service manager walking over from Volkswagen and I knew what was about to happen. The Volkswagen manager told me he was now the new Porsche sales manager and I didn't fit in with his new plans and he was letting me go. I've seen many people over the years who haven't done one tenth of the job I've done been offered a position somewhere else at the dealership, but I was simply fired. I found out yesterday that Bill has been demoted to a salesman and I assume he told the owner the only way it would work for him was if I were gone. I'm sure he wanted my customer base. The sad thing is that no one really expects Bill to stay very long, I'm sure he's been looking for another job for several months now. It took me over two hours to pack up seven years of my stuff and almost everyone there came up to tell me how sorry they were, shake my hand and wish me luck. Luckily I've kept good records and have the names, address and phone numbers of all my customers.
I'm still in a state of shock and walking around in a daze. I've got to get on the ball and get a new resume typed up.
Here’s an e-mail I sent the owner;

Dear Chas,
I wanted to take this time to tell you how much I appreciate the chance you gave me to work at your dealership. The past seven years have been absolutely the best of my thirty year career. I have never been prouder to be associated with any organization in my entire life.
Special thanks for the sales award trips you've given me. They've allowed me to see places I probably wouldn't have seen otherwise and places I've always dreamed of.
I hope I will be able to use you as a reference in my pursuit of employment and I will always have fond memories of my time at your dealership.
Sincerely,
Sam Fowler

He promised to write me a letter of recommendation, but I never got it and it was only a few days before I got a letter from their attorney accusing me of theft of their property and threatening to file charges against me if I didn’t return my card files. I had to hire an attorney and it cost me over nineteen hundred dollars to have him call them off because I’d never signed anything stating that I couldn’t contact them. Apparently a few years after I was hired they had new employees sign a non compete agreement, but I never signed one. I got my vacation pay, but most of it went to the attorney and of course they still refused my trip I’d won to Germany. There’s gratitude for you! I can’t wait to see what kind of Karma comes back on these people.