Fired: my experiences, advice.

[TwoTwentyNine]

I am, increasingly, by all accounts a good employee.

In the experiences listed below I bear varying amounts of shared-blame. I write this post to get this off my chest, and to get down, coalesce, what I think were I to get fired again.

Between 2008 and 2012 I was fired three times.

First time: I richly had it coming. I wasn't doing my job well, they warned me, and they fired me fair and square. I have since implemented their suggestions, and sent them amends via social media to apologize. They were careful of my dignity while firing me, but nickel and dimed me on my way out. They also conveniently forgot about contractual obligations, but hey, it was my turn to lose.

Second time: If I was 90% at fault for my first firing, this was one was 35%, no more. I was making mistakes and perhaps had to go, but there were others doing far worse (see below). The situation was that there were systemic problems at the company. Of my ten coworkers in the same functional area, I was the only one showing fire and zip about my job (lesson learned from first firing: do my job), so since I was productive, I had a higher sampling size of chances to run afoul of the broken system. And as as I said, I bear some responsibility. But others were doing worse, and I suspected the system would chew them up soon enough. It did.

Having been through the "you're through" game, I knew I was done there and played nice, leaving quietly. Consider a profoundly broken machine: it can work for awhile. Then the first little cog gets spun out; I was that first cog. And it is only hard to fire the first person. Sure enough, soon other cogs and wheels were failing and breaking. While I went quietly, these people didn't. The organization was gutted in time everyone replaced. I doubt they learned the lesson. There was also the attendant drama of people who didn't go as quietly as me. Perhaps they had a point. Whatever the cause, there was much sturm und drang.

The other thing to consider about firing: justified or not it creates lifelong professional enmity. While I can be sincerely personally friendly with many of the people who didn't lift a finger to advocate for me, I would never cross the street to help them. Remember, the person firing is saying in effect: "I don't care if you face homelessness and hunger. We want you gone, so just go". They can expect an equally hard heart from me in the future.

The other thing to remember: remember that small cog that got spun out when that drama all started? Well, that little nodoby cog in 2012 can grow to be a bigger wheel elsewhere in, say, 2017. And the employer in 2012 can be the job applicant in 2017. Guess who can be on the hiring committee?

Third firing: To their credit, the only morally reprehensible thing they did was forthrightly trump up the ostensible reasons to get rid of me. I bear no responsibility for this firing: I explicitly did what I was explicitly hired to do. As soon as they trumped the ostensible reasons to get rid of me, and I demonstrated that I would go quietly, they were kind, generous, and very ethical as they transitioned me out.

What they didn't reckon with, but had to:

1. It is fine to get rid of someone. But you have to be sure, certain, that the person you are bringing in won't be worse. And if that person is worse, they may not go quietly (because remember: it is only hard to get rid of the first person. Why not get rid of this person?). And if they don't go quietly? Drama.

2. Firing is always a moral question. When it is mostly or all unjustified, there is the very real consequence of karma. Anyone is welcome to doubt karma in the workplace, but I have seen it again and again. This is a very serious matter. And karma, when it comes back (and it will), will come back more terribly, and terribly in its awful irony. I shudder to think of the awesome power of workplace karma.


All that being said, I bear no active resentment against those people who let me go. I will never go out my way to help them, but I won't actively seek to hurt.

Thoughts on if I were to get fired again, using "I" statements:

Most of the time I sensed my time was short. In the future, I'd immediately ask to have a direct conversation with my boss, immediately getting it all out. If I was about to get let go, I'd ask to be able to quit.

But let's say I get called in or called, and "it just isn't working out". My mind would immediately leap to:

1. Thank them for giving me a chance, apologize where I honestly could for mistakes I made. It is morally and humanly acceptable to cry at this point.

2. Ask to quit rather than get fired. (Some people never do this, and they have good reasons. I prefer to quit because most applications ask I've been fired. I can honestly say "no".)

3. Ask them to not give a negative reference.

Typically this is the most one can reasonably ask for when fired. It can't hurt to go for the following:

4. Ask for a commitment to a good reference, even if said references will be limited in scope.

5. Ask for severance pay. I have received as little as nothing and as much as one week's pay. It will probably be a lump sum, and I'd want to get said check before I left for the day, which leads to:

6. Saying goodbye to any coworkers who will make eye contact, and leaving the premises with whatever dignity one can muster.

Summary

Getting fired sucks, and it must suck to have to do it.

If it must be done, I suggest the following:

Firers: Remember the firee is a human, and will be hurt and scared. And remember that this scared, hurt human may hold your professional future in their hands someday soon.

Firee: If a firing must happen, then I suggest to go quietly. Get home, grieve, then move on with life. Forgive, but don't forget.

I am sorry I was in the position to be let go in each of the three situations. There is plenty of blame to go around. I failed, they failed. Hopefully we all moved on. But there are consequences for the fired and the firing. These consequences can be very very serious. Firing is not to be done lightly. It must be done, I suppose.

A firing should be nearly as deep as a troubling wake up call for the person/organization doing the firing:

* If the fired was mostly to blame, why were they hired in the first place?

* If the fired truly had limited responsibility in the debacle, what systemic problems are on their way to visit more heartache and failure?