The Gierke family Campaign

I was retrenched at the beginning of September 2022 from my position as operational manager (16.2) for an industrial flooring company, and since then everything has been in a downward spiral.  The person I worked for was not honest, and I got schemed out of portions of my retrenchment package. I started looking for work, and in the months following, I soon realized that I was going to go under if I didn't do something quickly. We worked so hard to get somewhere in life, my wife and I, and we bought our home at that point only a year earlier. So I decided to start my own business doing polyurethane and epoxy flooring. I used the money I had to register the business, sold the car I had, and bought an old diesel bakkie to work with. I spent a lot of time doing advertising on social media and canvassing for work. In the first month or two, I gave around 12 quotes, which would have saved us, but I did not get the work because I have a startup company and no one wanted to take the risk. For the first five jobs, I was going to use one of the three teams that was also retrenched, but I soon found out that they were still doing subcontractor work for my old employer, and they subsequently stole my work and took it to him. But things kept going wrong as I started to have less and less funds to conduct my business, to the point where I now have absolutely no money to put diesel in my bakkie to go out and look for clients.