Over the last 8-9 months, my job has had a seismic shift in it’s description, to a mostly sales based job, in a “cold call” kind of way, and a ton of tedious admin tasks have been added. My KPI’s are still in the upper half of all employees doing my job across the country (400+), and in the non-sales based categories, I’m a top 10% employee. Problem is, I now hate a job I used to enjoy. I’m not good at sales, and have no desire to be. I don’t know how long I can pencil-whip my way through this job, stressing over being found out that I suck at sales. It’s going to happen.
In January the company asked for 15 people to opt out, to avoid layoffs. About 20 took them up on it, but none of them were in my part of the country. As they re-routed us after those 20 left, they realized they had to make cuts in my area, and in May they laid off 5 of the 26 people that do my job in my region. No opt out was offered, and the criteria for who was laid off made no sense to anybody. I really like and respect all of my coworkers, and it sucked to see people lose their jobs when they didn’t want to, and I did.
Now, my boss has told a couple of senior team members that he expects a few more people to be let go at the end of this year, maybe early next year. The severance package is fantastic, and would set me up to pursue work I actually enjoy.
I’m worried that the layoffs will be some random selection process like they were in May, instead of the possibility to opt out (same severance package was given in both scenarios) and more of my co-workers could be let go and I’d be stuck here. My boss is a pretty reasonable guy, but has been on edge a lot more since the changes were made. Does it make sense to tell him I WANT to opt out, before it’s even on the table? Should I frame it in a “take one for the team” kind of way? If I admit that I hate it, I guess the worst case scenario is I get fired eventually. I have a couple of standing job offers elsewhere, so it’s not the end of the world, but it would certainly be nice to be paid for the next 9-10 months, in addition to a couple of other bonuses.
TIA.