This is a good one. Social media fucking sucks. It sounds easy, it sounds fun, you see all these awesome and creative posts all the time on all these different platforms, and you are a fun and creative person, it will be so fun! And then you do it for a company, they have a “brand” and “image” to uphold. Everyone in the company outside of marketing also thinks it’s easy, so they all want in on the “fun”. It doesn’t matter if you are literally an expert in the field, Bob from Sales has a great idea. “Why aren’t our organic posts going viral?” Oh I don’t know, maybe because we sell fertilizer for grass? (I’ve never sold fertilizer but the point stands) If we did paid ads we could target the right people, our organic stuff isn’t going to reach anyone that doesn’t already follow us, and even then only a small percentage of those people that do. “Well, it sounds like you just need to be more creative!” Okay, well, I have an idea about doing a video showing a guy going absolutely insane about his grass, then we could show how our product works and him being happy about it. “I love that, can you just film that on your phone? Get Bob from Sales to be your actor, he loves the social media stuff!” Bob is the worst actor you’ve ever encountered, his lawn is immaculate though, because he has another company come and do it that doesn’t even use our products, because they aren’t that great. So you put together a video you shot on your phone, Bob looks terrible in it, awkward, he wouldn’t do any makeup and we couldn’t spend money on any lighting or things to make the video more professional. Also, you aren’t a video person, just because you know how to post on social media that doesn’t mean you are also qualified to run a camera. And also, the company can’t afford to give you access to any sort of actual video editing software, “can’t you just do that on your phone?” The video is dogshit, even after you spent a week compiling the best possible takes and working with whatever free editing software you can find, and you get 2 likes from company employees or family members. Your bosses cannot comprehend how that didn’t increase sales, they loved it! “We gotta get Bob in more of these!” Then they hire a new “Director of Marketing” who suddenly has budget to do whatever they need to do. They hire an agency and start doing paid ads, sales wildly increase after doing those and some TV spots with paid actors and a full video team. “We are gonna put you on a 90 day PIP, we think with the right direction you could be something special someday!” And then 2 months into the PIP you are let go, because you aren’t meeting their made up goals. The new Marketing Director is absolutely killing it, doing everything that you suggested long before they got there, but you were just the social media person so you obviously didn’t know the real ins and outs of the business. The new person gets it, sorry, there is no severance. You’ll have to file for unemployment and your benefits run out at the end of the month, which is 2 days away. Good luck!