Ever been fired?

[Jax]

Just curious. Have you ever been fired from a job, and if so, how'd you handle it, what happened in your life (i.e. how'd you make ends meet etc).

[Coaster]

yeah ... by an asshole (And he still is today) 26 yrs ago! I started my own business and never looked back. I will say that i worked 2 jobs the first 1.5 yrs to make the mortgage. And these last 2 yrs I've worked part time for a company so that I could larch onto their healthcare..... something incredibly expensive ($9000) for self employed husband/wife business! We just hunker-down and do what needs to be done to get by..............

[Jude30]

I got fired from a job just over six years ago. It was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I hated that job. I woke up every morning wondering if I had any sick days left. Long story short they fired me because my production, and quality dropped after we lost our son. So you can tell what a wonderful environment it was to work in.

They gave me two weeks severance, and promised not to fight my unemployment. So I just drew unemployment and worked a job for cash under the table until I was able to find a job.

[Lilith]

nope and it would be something I'd find very hard to deal with.

[rabbit]

Never been fired. Life is too short to do a job you hate, so I generally move on to something better before I allow my dislike to creep into my work.

Just to be clear, being fired is DIFFERENT from being laid off.

[Jax]

Fired or layed off. Isn't the uncertainy of "what next" or "now what" the same? And that's really what I'm wondering about. I've pretty much decided the concept of being fired - or said differently - being without a job - absolutely terrifies me. It's easily my biggest fear. I'm the breadwinner, have kids etc. Don't have a real glorius lifestyle and am a conservative spender, yet I fear this. It's kind of unhealthy.

[rabbit]

Fired or layed off. Isn't the uncertainy of "what next" or "now what" the same? And that's really what I'm wondering about. I've pretty much decided the concept of being fired - or said differently - being without a job - absolutely terrifies me. It's easily my biggest fear. I'm the breadwinner, have kids etc. Don't have a real glorius lifestyle and am a conservative spender, yet I fear this. It's kind of unhealthy.

:box:

I understand the fear. But the key is to use that fear in a positive way. Keep learning new things. Broaden your skills. Constantly look at the job market. Envision yourself working at another place. You'll quickly realize that there is life beyond the walls of your workplace, and that YOU are bigger than any one job.

Remember, you work for YOURSELF AND YOUR FAMILY. They are your corporation, your shareholders.

[osuche]

I was laid off once...I was a Pixie then (it was back in 2003) and some of you may remember that it was a tremendous blow to my ego. My husband was in grad school, which made it difficult to make the mortgage...but thank God we were living in Ohio where our mortgage was *much* smaller.

I did consulting about 1/2 time for 4 months while I looked for a job...when I got one, I was so grateful that I looked before I leaped and I ended up in a position where I was on the road constantly for 18 months until I quit.

We scrimped, used savings, and focused on finding enough work to offset the bills. There's work out there, if you're not too proud to do it. When it comes to survival, I'm never too proud. :)

[Jude30]

Hell I was hoping to get laid off this winter. Kansas' unemployment is very generous. If I had been laid off with the rest of the crew this winter, and had been able to take my daughter out of day care, I would have actually made money sitting at home on my ass. I still have my other unofficial job so I would have been coming out way ahead of the deal.

[Irezumi Kiss]

Been fired twice. In both situations, my ability was of far more greater worth and reach than the jobs' environment and management...but, I was young and hungry to make a "life"...and I was the kind of person who would find something that works and didn't bother to keep looking for better if it continued to work...but when you need to grow, sooner or later you won't like what you're doing or who you're working for.

So, in both, I was fired because deep down inside I knew I was and deserved better (first job) and I didn't have (or grew to lose) respect for my boss (second job) and in both that led to my making "don't give a fuck" mistakes and slacking off, which led to my firing.

Back then, in the early 90s, the times were different, the city was different, the market for my career was different and I had been doing steady hustles in doing work since being a sophomore in art college and continued doing freelancing even during my main jobs. If you crashed back then, the burn wasn't anywhere as bad as it would be today...and if you did your legwork, you could climb back as long as you kept focus. So thanks to the job board at school which I continuously worked like a crack fiend, I eventually got a new job, my current one. But there was about a two-and-a-half month dry spell before I got this that severely tested my limits. It was hard maintaining a single apartment lifestyle without a steady income, but...my hustles came through.

[Pita]

Yes, from a drugstore because my drawer came up short. I'm convinced that the guy working with me that day took the money, but I had no way to prove it. I was devastated and embarrassingly busted into tears.

[IM1469]

No, I got out before they came though the department and fired, rather than lay off, most of the workers. However, my best friend who survived the massacre later faced the harrowing experince of on a Tuesday being promoted to AVP. However, when he came to work that Friday he was "fired" by 9;45 a.m., "reinstated" before noon and placed in the "temporary until further notice" category by 4:00p.m. the same day. That status lasted almost two years until he qualified for their early retirement package that was offered to him.

[Oldfart]

Yes, I had a company suck my brain dry and spit me out.

The prick owner still smiles and says hello 15 yrs later.

He's the only person in the world immune to the AIDS virus, 'cos even

HIV needs something to look down on.

[wyndhy]

never from a "career" type job but i was fired as a waitress once. it was a summer job but i'd been waiting table for a while by then (i was a great waitress. seriously). anyway, i had an attitude with the chef and a few other local girls who worked there. one of those girls fired me at the end of my shift on a shitty tuesday-lunch where i made 50 bucks at best, for wearing the wrong color gap shirt. i went to the bar and asked for my shift drink to go, smoked a roach in the parking lot and waited for hubby (then live-in-sin-at-your-rents-summer-house-boyfriend) to pick me up. pppffftttthhh

it's like a brat pack movie.:roflmao:

i was also fired from another summer job once that i felt really awful about. i had to get up at 5:30am monday to saturday and ride my bike about 30 blocks to a hotel pool to give swimming lessons to kids by 6. i was 17 and renting a house for the summer with friends, working two jobs, and there were too many late nights of partying and too many times my roomie turned off the alarm on me. i got fired on the phone and threw up after. i really liked the kids and felt bad about fucking up so much. i finished out the summer painting t-shirts for seiks and they sold them for 30 bucks a pop.



i don't work now, but if i were the breadwinner, losing my job would be a worry. i don't think it's unhealthy unless it is consuming you.

[scotzoidman]

Been fired, laid off, downsized or otherwise separated from employment more times than I can count. Looking back, the only jobs I didn't get fired from were the ones I quit before they could drop the axe on me. I also had a couple where they drew a target on my ass until I got the message & moved on. With all my vast experience at it, you might think I learned how to cope with the anger, depression, & feelings of low self-worth associated with getting shitcanned. You might think wrong about that.

Having said that, I think maybe the fear I lived in of losing my job was far worse for my health than the actual event. My biggest problem was that by the time I finally got serious about building a career, I found myself in a position that was going the way of the horse & buggy, yet paid too well to just walk away & start over at entry level. With my last pink slip I gave up working for other people altogether...working for myself is a tough row to hoe, but I work at my own pace & I know the boss isn't gonna be riding my ass if take a minute to goof off...

[dicksbro]

Other than a two-week layoff back in the mid-sixties because of short term business slowdown ... no, never was fired. Would have troubled me a lot ... more so as I got older and my family and financial responsibilities grew. Not sure how I would have dealt with it.

Now that I'm retired ... I'm glad that's one worry that has passed me by.

[gekkogecko]

Yeah.

Joke them if they can't take a fuck.

[Jax]

It's interesting reading the various stories. And from what I can tell, everyone pretty much survived it. It's just one of those ugly fears though.

[sodaklostsoul]

I got fired once cause one of the other employees told the boss I was gonna look for other work. I knew they were gonna close that business anyway.
I was staying with a friend so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I kept pestering another friend to hire me cause I knew he was gonna need someone to help when another one of his employees went on baby leave and I had the experience he needed without having to have a lot of training.

[scotzoidman]

It's interesting reading the various stories. And from what I can tell, everyone pretty much survived it. It's just one of those ugly fears though.
Well, anyone who didn't survive it wouldn't be here to tell the story, would they? ;) Which I think just shows that the people here are survivors, however dysfunctional we might be otherwise, we are the folks who find a way to deal with it. Losing a job is a devastasting event on many levels when it happens, but it's human nature to look for a way to make lemonade when life hands you the proverbial lemon.

[Rhiannon]

it can be ugly or joyous. I have had a couple of both

[Jude30]

I got to thinking, if you get really technical I've been laid off twice. The first job I ever had I got so I could pay for a canoe trip to Canada. We got back a day early from the trip and I went to the store to see if they wanted me to work and they were loading everything onto trucks. I just turned my bicycle around and went home. Never talked to the owner again after that.

[WildIrish]

I was laid off the day before I left for a week's vacation in Arizona.

I came home and told Mrs. WI the news and she said "Well then we're going for two weeks." lol

I dropped four resumes in the mail on the way to the airport the next morning and came home to 5 messages on the machine from one of the companies. I called him up two minutes after I walked in the door and the next morning went for an interview. He hired me that day and I worked there for seven years before moving on.

That was the company that introduced me to managing real estate, which is what I'm still doing now...15 years later.

[1nutworld]

I've avoided this this topic because I've had a hard time recovering from when I was fired.

At first there was the shock, dissapointment and confusion from the act of being fired itself. After thinking that it wouldn't be long that I would be in the unemployment line, I went into a state of denial that "I" was the problem.

Upon further reveiw, I WISH that I had just put my boots on and my nose to the grindstone, and hit the floor running in my pursuit of a new job.

After spending 3 months mildy applying for a new job, I started in earnest. It became obvious that the job market where I live, was for crap. I spend the next months applying for any job I could find, some jobs repeatedly, just hoping for a chance.

The bottom line is that I was out of work for 336 days. I'm still mildly searching for other work, as my current "day job" has no long-term opportunity. My 2nd job is very competitive and there are few openings, so that isn't likely to turn into something that I can do full time, but I am doing my best to be in the right place at the right time.

Between the hard economy and my own having a job history that bounces from industry to industry, in search of a "career", I found losing my job to be a very life altering and completely devistating experience.

[scotzoidman]

I've avoided this this topic because I've had a hard time recovering from when I was fired.

At first there was the shock, dissapointment and confusion from the act of being fired itself. After thinking that it wouldn't be long that I would be in the unemployment line, I went into a state of denial that "I" was the problem.

Upon further reveiw, I WISH that I had just put my boots on and my nose to the grindstone, and hit the floor running in my pursuit of a new job.

After spending 3 months mildy applying for a new job, I started in earnest. It became obvious that the job market where I live, was for crap. I spend the next months applying for any job I could find, some jobs repeatedly, just hoping for a chance.

The bottom line is that I was out of work for 336 days. I'm still mildly searching for other work, as my current "day job" has no long-term opportunity. My 2nd job is very competitive and there are few openings, so that isn't likely to turn into something that I can do full time, but I am doing my best to be in the right place at the right time.

Between the hard economy and my own having a job history that bounces from industry to industry, in search of a "career", I found losing my job to be a very life altering and completely devistating experience.
I know the feeling myself, nut...It's a devastating loss, & sometimes, the harder the crash, the longer it takes to emerge from the state of shock. Don't blame yourself for not hitting the ground running...I spent over 2 1/2 yrs out of work myself, for some reason nobody wanted to hire a 50ish diabetic with a bad back, can you believe that? ;)
I can sense in you the same state of mind that I was in not so long ago. I know it sounds like empty words, but keep hangin' in there...I also sense that you are a survivor like me...

[Aqua]

I've been fired from four different companies. One of them twice.

Three of them re-hired me before the ink had dried on my termination papers.

My current employer is one of the three.

[scotzoidman]

I've been fired from four different companies. One of them twice.

Three of them re-hired me before the ink had dried on my termination papers.

My current employer is one of the three.
There's gotta be an interesting story behind at least one of those events.

Frankly, I can't imagine ever going back to work for someone who just shitcanned me...but then no one ever said of me that I don't know how to carry a grudge ;)

[Oldfart]

Yes, if I'm good enough to take back, then fuck them for firing me in the first place.

[1nutworld]

There's gotta be an interesting story behind at least one of those events.

Frankly, I can't imagine ever going back to work for someone who just shitcanned me. ;)

Amen to that, but I've gotta admit I'm trying to get back into the place that fired me.............but not suceeding I might add.

[scotzoidman]

Amen to that, but I've gotta admit I'm trying to get back into the place that fired me.............but not suceeding I might add.
True enough, an empty bank account in a sour job market has no pride...I did once see a co-worker come back for less money & lower position...he had a family to support & no prospects at any other place in town. I regarded it as an extraordinary act of pride-swallowing, & a very ordinary act of fatherhood.

Oh yeh, I did go crawling back into the boss' office once after getting the axe, & actually convinced him to let me stay for less money...it only postponed the inevitable tho...

[jseal]

I have not been laid off ... yet.

Ever since the company went private, it has been “downsized” and “reorganized” to the point that it is hardly recognizable. Sad to say that at my age I am actively looking for a new employer ... before the axe falls.

:(