Hits Hard, Hits Home
An Ode to being Fired
There is certainly nothing like it ….
It can be said, and I do not disagree, that getting one’s heartbroken is a very good thing. Now that goes of love. Personal love. Erotic panging of heart. Romantic tanking with track marks and leases broken, eye make-up destroyed by too many tears, freak outs, screams, reunions that aren’t the most wise - all of it.
Honestly, I love this shit. I have been stepped on and devastated in the more fantastic ways. Truly. Ask me about being dumped in the airport with no return flight home for days. Or jumping out of a moving vehicle mid-tiff. I have been ghosted, laughed at, and stood up as well. None of these are “good” nor desired but something I have had a much easier time rolling with vs the professional whammies I’ve weathered.
Like, funny thing, it occurs to me as ‘normal’ that I would get an intimacy rug burn or two – even romantic in its way. A War story. Literary, even. Something to be comforted for, rebound from, write, sing, dance about. There is opportunity for revenge – even just in fantasy – and redemption. (I SO love killing and making up, sometimes the more temporarily the better.) Yet work? Oh work, it is very hard to conceive that I could ever recover from that moment, on the showroom floor or in the office, perhaps on the phone, or (ever more painful) via email or text. (OK text, that is the worst, like WORST WORST).
I have read no novels. Listened to no ballads nor arias for the fired and forgotten. Odes to the laid off and left behind. It was not until I had some serious job fuck ups and shame, I could no longer keep to myself that ANYONE told me what I wish I had always known: “I’ve been fired, too.”
Anyone – ANYONE – tell me TELL ME TELL ME TELL EVERYONE that it happens, and it hurts, and you survive. You can and will and do.
Yet, when we talk about survival it is easy, earnest, and most hopeful to think that means ‘better’ and ‘stronger’ – well sure. That happens. Yet more than that: we emerge different. Changed. It is so tempting to invest in the hope or offer the advice that upon being shit on you will win the gold medal prizes of wisdom and resilience.
It will and you won’t ever know it. By surviving to an age where you are old enough to have a job to be fired from alone begets that you have accrued a hearty metabolism for getting by. The stamina to take shit builds up, like plaque, without note nor care for you awareness of that. Also, strength can be a way of dulling if we do not, even arbitrarily, acknowledge that we are doing well by surviving and you also don’t have to.
Oh wow, that brings me to a thing I hear, specifically and in general senses, that perhaps a client is being too picky or unappreciative. Fuck that. That is it exactly – the dulling, the callous that builds up from effort and labor. We need these callouses, but that is not all that is needed. Also necessary is awareness and nurturing, support and affection. In the “office” that looks like: feedback, guidance, space, inquiry, time, boundaries, transparency and clarity. Clarity. Clarity. Clarity. Again: clarity. Knowing what is being asked of you, what the timelines are, resources, communication channels, etc. Yes, you can work alright without those, but you need not. There is time for strength and there are too times for unacceptance and calling out.
I was fired for a reason I will never know at a time when I was too young and expectations to low to know to do any more than say, “OK.”
It was my first job in New York City. I was wildly under-experienced and less than two weeks in. As clearly as I can recall walking through the West Village sweating through my “professional outfit”, the phone call I made to my roommates, mother, boyfriend, and bestie – I have no idea what was said to me at the time of termination. Truly, if you held a rifle to my head, I would get shot over recalling that lecture. I do know it was short and I do know my breath sped up. Eyes becoming fuzzy as my mascara bled with the tears in the corners of my eyes.
The job was not one I ‘wanted’; it was one I could get. The company was totally fine, but in choosing them I used no vetting nor particular strategy. It was just a job I needed to survive that I was so happy to be saved by getting and now was without. Apparently, that meant that I was terrible not simply for whatever reasons I was terminated, but in totality. All aspects of my person and future were a fail.
Mercilessly, my boyfriend dumped me (add that to list of broken heart moments, title being: Getting fired and dumped in the same three days. How to battle eviction and suicide in the late 90s.) The next weekend, my father came for a preplanned visit. As promised, I took him to museums and on outings. Bad company as I was, teary faced and fully embracing my woe, the visit became a bore and burden upon us both.
There was one moment of note however: my dad and I sitting on the staircase of the Metropolitan Museum of Art eating packed lunches and people watching. The silence broke with a new pitying soliloquy by me, and my dad put his hand up and on to my knee. Thus, spoke he a bit of the worst advice I have ever received: “People disappoint kiddo, that is what they do.”
If not apparent, what is most terrible about that statement is that it ends there. That is it. Nothing more. Not only is the statement depressing – as well as untrue – it was said with no footnote on how to cope. (Now thinking on it, I don’t think my dad’s quote even qualifies as ‘advice’ even bad advice, at all?)
In any case, the reason I share this experience, other than to toss my pop under the bus of inadequate empathy, is to highlight exactly the damage assumptions about tough being good/shit happens/just roll with it/move on/and get the Hell over can lead to. Sensitivity, excessively so, is about not taking responsibility in just the same way that thick skin can. The line is this – be affected, not broken is all. Touched, but not destroyed.
Being fired is survivable, but that is a given; you will recover, and take that for granted. But let it hurt. Let it burn. Not doing so will NOT expediate recovery, it will only make you hard (and not in the fun way...) and closed to those in similar pain currently or possibly as you gain leadership in future roles.
Not recently fired!? Luck ducky you! Well do this, talk about how it happens to your staff, mentees, student, pals and how it blows; discussing the fear and story is important. You can own that. Be great and also acknowledge you have been laid out and low all in the same breath. That is called living - it is just like loving but more expansive and too, I swear, excellent.
