Terminated: My Story (A COVID-era Editorial)

Maybe my story isn't that interesting. Maybe it’s just me seeking closure.

Or maybe it’s a small peephole into a monolithic and dystopian future for employees of Corporate America, where deviation from groupthink (and group-act) is a trapdoor into unemployment.

As I walked toward the executive building on my last day of work to turn in my laptop, I couldn’t help but notice the Pride Progress Flag positioned prominently on the roof. I didn’t see the American flag, as I have in the past. Perhaps it was there and was just obstructed from my view by the giant Pride flag. Or maybe it had blown away and nobody noticed.

I also didn’t see any other flags celebrating any other causes. It was just that one flag, flying high, in March. If that’s the pinnacle message the company wants to herald, that’s their prerogative. But for me, on that day, there was an irony to it, as I handed over my badge to the corporate thought police, pleading guilty of standing firm in my convictions and to a position that posed zero real harm to the company. I left the premises wondering whether this flag of diversity was less about a civil rights cause and more about a corporate social experiment testing the bounds of an exclusive inclusivity.

It was March 31, 2022 and the winnowing fork of neo-corporatism had swung through town. When the sun set on the day, I found myself in the chaff pile. Because it seems diversity matters until it doesn’t matter to the people that matter most.

But maybe I was born this way– instinctively skeptical of new exotic drugs and bound by conviction to refuse them, at least until I see all the long-term data. If that makes me reckless, guilty as charged. I believe this type of skepticism is healthy and a quality that made me a valuable employee for all those years.

But in 2022 it made me dispensable.

I promise I’m not writing this opinion piece to badmouth the company that put money in my wallet for two decades. And I’m not here to divulge trade secrets or blow whistles. Vengeance is not mine. I’m just here to share my story in the public square. This was my experience over the past 9 months, since first receiving the notice from my former place of employment that there would be a company-wide employee Covid-19 vaccine mandate.

As a Senior Environmental Scientist in the Quality Division, I was well-trained in the scientific art of making quality and safety decisions based on substantial data trends and risk-based analyses. It was with this same skill-set and code of ethics that I became convinced that I should not get any of the available Covid vaccines at that time. A thing happens when you become fully convinced in your own mind to do or not do something— you form a personal conviction. My religious belief system and its scriptures warn that violating a personal conviction will result in certain spiritual injury. I believe denying a personal conviction is a dangerous action that has far-reaching and festering consequences. It’s a serious matter and it’s the reason I put in an exemption to the vaccination.

Four months after applying for a vaccine exemption– two weeks before Christmas– I received a generic email from Global HR letting me know it had been denied. No specific reason given. Just a statement that I had two weeks to deny my sincerely-held conviction or they would be forced by the hand of the oligarchs to show me the one-way turnstyle. I was then left with two options: (1) find a way to change my conviction to match the company mandate or (2) suffer the consequences of following my current conviction. Note: there was no appeal process.

My attempts to change my conviction did not work, as you may have guessed. I assure you that I (sort of) tried. When a friend told me to “stop being a martyr, just get the darn shot so your family won’t starve to death”, I wondered if I was indeed being selfish for following my personal conviction on this matter. But, after further introspection, prayer and counsel, I decided I was not wrong to stay the course.

Then, in early 2022, I saw some slivers of hope that the company would change its mind on its mandate. First, in January, the Supreme Court decided it was not constitutional to impose a federal vaccine mandate. While the follow-up media mantra was that private companies could still do whatever the heck they wanted (omnipotence must be cool), I watched quite a few corporations quickly drop their mandates to save face. Maybe my company would follow suit, I thought.

Then, soon after, news came out that the variants were weakening. Then there were the studies showing the vaccinated and unvaccinated were transmitting Covid at very similar rates. So, if the mandate was based on a notion that the unvaccinated were a disproportionate threat to public health and then it turns out they actually aren’t, what are we even doing here? Why continue the charade? Oh, you can’t turn the Titanic around, you say— then maybe you are too big to succeed in an ever-changing world.

Suppose we ignore the data and believe the myth that I was a clear and present danger to the company due to my unvaccinated status. Then why did it take you so long to fire me? The moment I said I wasn’t going to take the shot, you should have shown me the door. But, no, you allowed me to compromise the health of my coworkers for 7 more months. Shame on you for letting me put my coworkers at risk, while I worked from home all those months. (Don’t worry, I had natural immunity by then).

In March 2022 I was still employed (two months beyond my original termination date) due to my company not having a replacement for me during the busiest quarter of the year. My Covid transmissibility threat level dropped during this period due to my company needing me to do a particular high-effort, high-visibility task that only I was experienced in doing. Early March I also received a top-end 2021 performance evaluation. My superiors determined that my previous year of working from home was worthy of high praise and a significant raise.

It felt like a mixed message.

Sure enough, a couple weeks later, on March 29, I got an email from HR that said I had one last chance to get the shot or I would be terminated on March 31. Then, on March 31 I received my last email from HR, telling me I was being let go that day. My pay and benefits would stop immediately. No severance. No thank you’s for 18 years of service. No parting words or exit interviews.

Nothing.

It was the quietest ending I’ve ever been a part of.

As it went, a group of nameless and faceless folks on a secret global committee decided the fate of an 18-year employee based on how he answered five questions on a standardized exemption questionnaire. Maybe I am just a bad test taker and my answers weren’t as sophisticated as those who got their exemptions approved. Though, I suppose it’s possible my beliefs were actually stronger and truer than some of those who got accepted and I just worded things in a manner not to the secret committee’s liking. Maybe the whole process was a lot more subjective than anyone cares to admit. Maybe it was an outright sham. Note: it was.

After all, if the unvaccinated were such an imminent health risk, why have an exemption process at all? Why make any accommodations? I mean, people were dropping like flies from Omicron, right? Constitution be damned in the name of keeping people alive. After all, an employee isn’t less of a transmission risk because they have religious convictions or have a doctor’s note. Drastic times require drastic measures my friends.

Sorry, I’m being cynical, which is unbecoming. Let’s just say I’m still in the middle of my cynical trials and it’s too early to pass judgment.

Yes, I say these things tongue-in-cheek, though they do follow a line of logic not completely off base. Unfortunately, there was no sound logic at play during this act of the pandemi-drama. I kept waiting for logic to make a cameo. But, nah. In retrospect, it seems the whole thing was nothing less than a hurried grab-bag of bad ideas put together at the demand of someone with a loaded syringe to their head. A house of cards from the beginning.

At the end of the day, my opinion doesn’t matter; I was put in the damaged goods pile. Everything I built for two decades was gone in a matter of a few months.

I was a high-performing eighteen-year company employee. I recently crossed a coveted salary mark, which was a big deal for me and my wife, who stays at home with my four kids. I held a niche role that only two other employees on the plant site held and I was the tenured one in that group. I was on the front lines for nearly every regulatory inspection as a trusted subject matter expert; my records show nearly 30 presentations over my 18 years. They trusted me to effectively communicate highly-specified trade information with the government. But they did not trust me to work from home for a few more weeks at the tail end of a “pandemic” (when I proved I was highly effective doing so). Nor did they trust me to come on site and follow the mask-and-test precautionary accommodations that the other unvaccinated (exemption-approved) employees were given.

Was my place of employment really not willing to make accommodation for a high-performing 18-year company employee?

What was their rationale here? Well, I tried to get an answer for that question, believe me. I only got one response, again from a nameless faceless emailer who essentially said “we believe our process was fair…don’t ask again”. Fair for them, I suppose, but not for me or the others who were denied accommodation. Still, it would have been nice to hear one good reason. Just one specific and logical explanation. I mean, getting fired and not knowing why your constitutionally-protected religious accommodation was denied seems a bit… well, unconstitutional.

Or were they just following a script rooted not in logic or science but something more acutely sinister?

When I turned in my computer on my last day I was met by my director and associate director. They supported me and expressed regrets in how this played out. I received dozens of emails on my last day and the days following questioning the legitimacy of the company’s decision. I even received an email from a coworker who was injured by the vaccine and wished she had considered a different route. I heard from exactly zero people that thought the company was making the right call by firing a high-performing eighteen-year company employee that was completing 100% of his duties from home at the tail-end of a waning pandemic, when unvaccinated transmissibility statistics showed no increased safety risk.

What am I left to believe then? Was the firing retribution for not conforming? Is corporate social credit scoring more reality than theory? Did the federal government promise kickbacks to companies for terminating a certain number of non-compliant employees? I really don’t know how to explain it.

So I am left unemployed, creatively testing the limits of our budgeting abilities and watching our savings account empty like a bathtub. Our long battle with the PA Unemployment Compensation Office ended today when they decided they would not pay out the $10,000 of backlog payments as they initially promised. I had to get a state representative to contact the UC office for me since they don’t have a working public phone number or email address. After 12 weeks of feet-dragging, the UC office said they finally spoke with my company, who said I was fired for violating company policy. So, they determined I actually do not qualify for unemployment after all and will get approximately $0.00 from the state. 12 weeks to get that answer. I suppose it’s true that I was fired for violating a policy (i.e., a late-game rule change to be exact). But we all know nuance is not a thing to ignore. Except that it is actually the thing being ignored here.

I wrote this not looking for pity but to bring to light what’s been hidden in the dark, and to be a voice for a few others that I know are nervous to go public about it. Life will be different for us going forward. In a larger sense, life will likely be different for all people who are skeptical of our society being built around this new breed of scientific religiosity.

But as the old adage goes, “I don’t know what the future holds but I know Who holds the future.” No, I may never again attain the salary level and benefits I had working at that company, but I sleep better knowing that no employer on Earth is my sovereign provider. And I’ve slept well knowing my kids saw me hold strong to my personal conviction, even if it means temporary hardship. My two months of unemployment have reinvigorated latent passions, spawned new pursuits and has meant more time connecting with God, family and friends. I believe the right door will open at the right time. One door closes and… you know how it goes.

So, yes, I’m frustrated by the injustices and illogical underpinnings of neo-corporatism, but I’m not bitter. I know we don’t live in a perfect world. It’s not the first time a company made decisions for their own best interests first. They were the corporation and I was the cog. It’s an old, old story.

Now it’s time to look forward and I truly believe the future will be bright.

I suppose I’m just left wondering why my former place of employment had to make the last nine months so dark.