- Firing during the probation period
- The managers don't disclose the actual reason why they are firing an employee during the probation period: they are silent almost all the time during the whole 2 months and 1/2 of employment and then - towards the end of the probation period - they come up to the employee, stating that he/she failed to reach the targets during his/her employment and they aren't sure whether they want to confirm him/her as a permanent employee, blaming it all on the employee and on his /her performance, although the employee is trying his / her best to accomplish his/her goals: a few days later , the managers fire the employee on the spot.
- As a matter of fact, there are some other reasons behind a firing during the probation period: in my case, for instance, the manager noticed (after more or less 1 month of employment) that one of the team members (who had been in the company for more than 10 years) and who was supposed to take care of my whole training really disliked me and was very often mad at me, although I was trying as hard as I could to abide by their rules and to follow the trainings.
- The reason why this person disliked me so much was actually related - in my opinion - to my unusual skills to speak several languages (indeed I ended up - quite by chance - in a project where all of the languages which I've been studying in the past 10 years were spoken, so this colleague was clearly envying me and was behaving exactly this way (complaining about me with the manager, stating that I wasn't paying enough attention to the trainings etc)
- To assume that someone is unfit for an entry level position (I had colleagues, whose job experience at SAP was their very first one, indeed they were part-time employees, studying at the university) sounds quite suspicious, considering that I had worked for 2 years previously in similar customer service positions in other companies and I never really had issues with the work itself: it's the kind of job which can be done basically by anyone, who has basic IT skills and basic language skills.
- The job itself consisted in calling the customers in order to remind them to pay for their invoices: a few days before firing me, the manager was trying to convince me that I had some mental disorder or cognitive deficit, keeping me from performing the job, which was actually an extremely easy job.
- The manager said also - though - that he believed in my potential and would have helped me find another position in the same company: I applied for about 25- 30 internal positions after getting fired, but none of my applications was successful though, so I spent 3 months unemployed and short of money, before receiving another job offer from another company.
- Obviously the manager told the other team members to behave exactly like the colleague who was bullying me all the time: they all wanted to make me believe that I - as a matter of fact - was unfit for the job and really deserved to get fired.
- During my first month of employment - indeed - only this colleague seemed to have something against me but, after some time, all of the employees (who were the manager's accomplices ) who at the very beginning used to have a friendly or neutral behavior towards me started being very strict on me , being very picky about every single (real or assumed) mistake from my side.
- After spending a few years in some multinational corporations, I actually realized that - every time the managers notice there's a conflict between two employees in the same project, they usually don't bother explaining the most arrogant and senior colleague that maybe he/she's wrong to have a certain behavior towards a new joiner (they find it awkward, how can you contradict some senior colleague, who has been in the company for such a long time?), they'd rather make these 2 colleagues work in 2 different projects or - the way it happened to me, to fire one of the two employees (usually the new joiner), so that they won't have any chance to meet and work together again.
- Most of the times - though - it's not that easy for an employee to find another suitable position in the same company , because the entry level positions aren't open all the time and most of the times only the senior positions are open and some employees might not fulfill the requirements for such positions.
- To sum it all up: the manager(s) wanted to hire me and they chose me among other candidates: however, after realizing - 20/30 days after my starting date, that one of the senior colleagues really hated me, the manager asked the other team members (who really had nothing against me) to be as critical and strict on me as this senior colleague was, to make this person's behavior look like "normal" and shared by the other ones, in order for the manager to be able eventually to fire me for a pretextual reason.
