Perfect Attendance Wins Job Offer

by Elizabeth
(Lewisburg, PA)

This story is about a friend of mine who couldn't even get an hourly job offer after 6 months of steady interviewing. I'll call him Ted. He was fired from his last job for violating company policy. Let's just say he partied a little too hard on a Thursday night and showed up Friday morning with alcohol on his breath. As you can imagine, the boss was none too pleased and gave him the royal boot. It was really sad because everyone liked Ted. He was a good worker and had worked at this same company for 10 years.

At the time, the economy was pretty strong and Ted thought he could get a job fairly quickly. Ted went on several interviews, but always seemed to come in 2nd or 3rd place. After 6 months of this, a good friend of his got him a job interview with a great company. Now all he had to do was impress the right people in the job interview.

When Ted was asked how he lost his job, he was truthful and told the manager that he made a terrible error in judgment that day that would never be repeated. He then went on to tell the manager that prior to this incident, he had gone 3 years without missing a day of work or being late.

Unknown to Ted, this company was struggling with absenteeism and workers showing up late. This one strength trumped his firing incident. Ted not only got the job, but 2 years later when the economy hit the skids Ted survived 2 huge layoffs. His boss told him that he was one of their best workers.

I'm so happy for Ted because I didn't think he was ever going to get a good job again. FYI--I forgot to mention that Ted got married to a really wonderful gal in the middle of all this. Just goes to show you the door really can swing both ways.