FIRED

My husband lost his job on Wednesday.  After nine years of faithful, loyal service; never missing one day of work that wasn't a vacation day or holiday; receiving positive, glowing annual employee evaluations; yearly merit raises and various job promotions, the owner of the company walked onto the job site, told my husband that they don't see eye to eye and to get off his property.  Seriously!  That was it.  Nothing more or less.  Just that..."we don't see eye to eye, I don't want you running this farm any longer, please get off my property."

We are shell-shocked, to say the least.

Yesterday, we had hopes that we may have a case of Wrongful Termination.  We read the laws and statutes for UT and ID regarding this topic.  We spoke to an attorney this morning.  We have NO case.  ID and UT are both "At Will" states which plainly means that an employer can terminate an employee AT WILL.  The only way it would be illegal is if they violated their own company personnel policy or were discriminatory in any way.

For the entire time we worked for Young Living Essential Oils (myself for 8 yrs, Speed for 9) we were taught that we had to have a paper trail in order to legally terminate an employee.  Since Speed & I were both in management positions with this company, we were subject to various training seminars in this topic.  We really thought we'd have a case as Speed has NEVER received any disciplanary action or notice in his entire history of YL employment.  But, after reading and re-reading the employee policy, we are screwed.

I guess having full time attorneys on your payroll has paid off for Gary Young.  He can be immoral, violate all kinds of human rights issues and get away with it.  He doesn't have to have a valid reason to terminate an employee.  The wording that these lawyers have worked so hard to get into print of the policy handbook state that the employer can terminate with or without due cause.  No warnings are necessary.   I'm not sure why the company wasted their money or our time training us otherwise.

So... now we sit here with no action available to us, no recourse.  We have to essentially just bend over and take it.

A 48 yr old man shouldn't have to start all over again.

I've cried and cried and hollered and kicked and screamed and sat in deep contemplation and walked around in a daze.  My husband is in a deep funk.  I'm seriously worried about him.  He's never been fired before.

There is no law to protect the middle class white man.  That sounds racist but it is NOT. If you know me, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am NOT racist.  But the facts are that if you are extremely wealthy or destitute or of any number of ethnicities beside Caucasian, you have options.  Otherwise, you're just plain outta luck.

I feel hollow inside.  I don't know what we are going to do.