I was recruited heavily by a company, as I had a reputation in the industry of being able to do a lot of deals. I was somewhat hesitant to join as I knew the company was in a turn-around phase, and there was risk. I negotiated a very good deal and joined. I quickly realized the company was in worse shape than I thought, and was completely disorganized, but still went about my business and started doing deals. Meanwhile, the company’s stock started to slide, going down 70% and everyone was panicking. I was on board about a year, and they started doing layoffs to preserve capital; I was on the list because they really didn’t have the money to do many deals.

I got a phone call from HR letting me know my position was being eliminated and that they were going to kindly going to grant me three weeks severance. I told them, no, when I joined they agreed to a year’s severance, which I had insisted on because I knew the company was risky. They claimed not to know anything about that, so I emailed them the executed agreement that committed them to a year’s severance including paying my COBRA premium. They went radio silent for two days, I assume looking for their copy, which they found.

To my surprise, rather than continuing to pay my salary regularly, they sent me a check for the year’s salary in full, including a year’s worth of COBRA payment. I had a new job in about a week, so got a nice bonus, plus payment for COBRA that I didn’t use.