A Christmas Miracle?

At 5:15 pm last Friday, my son got a call from his retail employer that we missed. By the time I saw that his workplace had called it was a good hour later. Now had I taken the call, I probably would have awakened him. But since no message was left, and since he was asleep and I thought he probably needed to sleep before his shift that night, and the general consensus was that we should just let him sleep, we did not wake him up to call into work and see the reason for their earlier call.

When my son got to work last Friday night, he was informed that he was fired. He had the option of working his shift if he wanted, or he could go home immediately, but his 90-day temporary position, and that of others as well, was being cut - effective immediately, only about 60 days into the 90-day period everyone had expected. Aside from the fact that it was a surprise, in general, we were really shocked that people who worked the night shift would be called, when most were likely sleeping, and informed that they were to be cut loose, effective immediately, over the phone. That would be like a person working the day shift who normally gets up for work between 6 & 7 a.m. getting a call at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning and being told they were fired - a bit shocking really.

Now I understand about the business end of the situation, but I'm not going to get into it here. That's not the focus of this post. No, the focus of this post is on the human aspect of this situation. We were really surprised our son was let go. Almost every morning upon his return home from work, he would inform us of something one of his managers had said to compliment him on his work. That Saturday morning when he returned with the news of his firing, he said that the managers were upset and that one had offered to write him letters of recommendation to the management at some of the other stores in the area. I truly believed that if they were as complimentary of him as he said they were and were that eager to write letters of recommendation, that they wouldn't want to let my son go. I wouldn't have been surprised if they had asked him to come back to work for them. I just didn't expect it to happen so soon!!!

This afternoon, he got a call from the retailer's HR department at the store he had been working at up until last Saturday morning. They have asked him to come back to work as a permanent part-time employee. This is not where he envisioned himself working after completing college, but it beats being unemployed, and it's nice to know you are wanted and appreciated. Hard work pays off. He starts again tomorrow night. I hope some of the other temporary employees were hired back too.