Isn't that just a kick in the pants

That really sucks, Dagney. Colorado is an "at will" state which basicly means an employee can be terminated at the employer's whim. I once worked at a fairly large public library system in this state where the library director was using public funds to purchase estate collections which he then "high-graded" for the most valuable books and disappeared them off to sell later in his OWN private business as an antiquitarian book dealer. We librarians who were subject specialists knew all about the director's little scam because it was our job to go through books as they came in and make the decision whether to add them to the library collection or set them aside for the yearly public booksale. Any book of any value always mysteriously vanished from the sorting shelves on the days the director stopped by for a visit. A good friend of mine became so outraged by this that he went before the library board of trustees and told them what was going on. The very day after the trustee's meeting my friend was fired. The director told the trustees that my friend had always been a problem employee with an ax to grind and that his statement to the board was a product of imagination and personal malice, nothing more. The trustees, disliking the thought of a public scandal, bought off on the director's fairy tale and took no action. Lucky for my friend, he quickly found another job because he was an outstanding librarian and everybody in the library world understood what had been going on (professional librarians are actually a pretty tight knit little group who freely exchange information about what's going on in their libraries). Three other librarians, including myself, quit in outrage for other jobs shortly there-after. Karma bit that library director in the a-- a few years later. He got a detached retina in one eye, and then the next. He is now almost blind. May the same thing happen to the jerks at your former place of employment. Good luck finding something better which I'm sure you will.