I have been employed by Impact Resource Group (formerly known as Huffy Service First, also known as NPS, Nasco) since 2000. Last Tuesday, the 24th of March I was "layed off". I was told it would be effevtive April 3. After 9 years of hard work for the company, the best they can give me is 1 1/2 weeks notice and a hurried phone call from the regional manager telling me he can't tell me anything other than to wait for a letter and that it had nothing to do with work performance.
Let's get to that for a moment, work performance. Over the last 2 years, Impact had picked up more accounts in this area and had had several people quit on them in this area. I was originally first and foremost a bike builder. I built bikes. I built them well. I was one of the fastest and best bike builders in the company. Very few if any of my bikes ever came back due to builder error. Store managers praised my work to my bosses and complained to me whenever Impact sent another tech other than myself into their store. All my yearly reviews for 9 years were Above Average or Outstanding. Stores and customers all loved me. I never was late, never called in sick, never took a vacation. I just simply worked hard and well.
2 years or so ago, my boss at the time asked me to take on further responsibilities involving furniture accounts and in home builds because her main tech for this area for that stuff had walked out on the company. I accepted and quickly had more work than I could handle, but I handled it and everyone was happy.
About a year later, my boss hired another furniture tech to handle some of the out of town stuff, which was fine. I still had plenty of work. Then Impact picked up the Toys R Us bike contract. She hired a new bike tech for the Salem area. She also gave him one of my Kmart stores in Corvallis. I still had plenty of work, so no big deal.
6 months later, Impact loses the Toys R Us bike contract, making the new bike tech they hired job obselete. Buy Impact kept him on anyway to do the Kmart and other Salem stores like Target and such, even though the Corvallis Kmart manager complained to me about how much he disliked the new bike techs work, that he was slow, and the majority of his bikes were not built right and that he wanted me back.
6 months or so after this, or now. My old boss was forced out from her position, and they consolidated her job with another manager who does not know the area or it's workers, does not know the one guy who has senority over me is not allowed in any Targets here for various reasons (we are still doing grills and furniture at Targets, so Impact still has to go in there) and who my old boss used to call me and ask what she should do with because she keeps getting complaints about him.
At this same time, Impact loses the Target bike contract, which is roughly 50% of the companies business. No worries right? I still have plenty of furniture work and I figure I have senority over everyone in the area except for that one other guy. I understand, times are tough, economy bad... Blah blah. So the first to get laid off I would think would be the newer hires.
Not so. I am the only one in my area to get laid off. The new bike tech kept his job, and my store that I gave him, the other new furniture hire kept her job and the 4 stores that I gave her. The guy with senority over me who isn't allowed in the Targets here keeps his job.
I get laid off after 9 years, without so much as a reason, other than the economy is bad and your position has been eliminated. Up until I got the call that they were letting me go, I was still very busy, making roughly $700 a paycheck with them, doing multiple workorders a day, I even offered to waive mileage pay to help out the company so I could drive to Corvallis and resume the Kmart store I once had up there.
I wasted 9 years of my life working for this company, and now I have to start completly over. I have nothing, no severance package, nothing. It makes no sense to lay off a hard working employee with an excellent track record of work that has been with the company for almost a decade, and keep the new people they just hired, keep them with the stores thet I GAVE them because I was previously too busy to do. It's unfair, and not right. It makes no sense.
I advise never to work for Impact, because this is the way they treat their established, hard working employees. Nearly a decade and I have nothing to show for it. Nothing. It still all seems like a dream, or a nightmare really.
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