I wasn't the only one fired that day. In all ten animators and designers lost their jobs. The lucky ones got told that day, the unlucky were still on holidays and didn't get told (via e-mail) until the day before they were due back at work.
To get through this I did the only thing I knew how to do. I crocheted. I made amigurumi for all the animators who got retrenched with me.
It turned out that the company was in massive financial difficulty and being retrenched was one of the luckiest things to have ever happened to me. Everyone who stayed ended up being stood down without pay about three months later.
By now the truth was starting to come out. Basically the company had not been paying any outside contractors, who were understandably angry and threatening to call in their debts. The program we had all worked on was critically panned and no overseas network wanted to touch it.
People were angry and venting their rage on Blog pages and Facebook. You won't find many of these left online, as threatening legal letters followed shortly after any comments were posted. When I found out my Superannuation hadn't been paid I decided to get my revenge. Quietly so as not to get sued.
This is what I made.
(This may have been the point where I became the Evil Crochet Genius.)
To cut a long story short our former employer was reported to the Australian Tax Office and they eventually re-united me and my colleagues with our missing money. The company is liquidation and our former boss is being pursued for 9 million dollars. Most of my colleagues have found work either in animation or unrelated fields. Occasionally we all catch up and reminisce about the good old days, when we all worked together as a team. And then we all stick pins into the doll.
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