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I havent personally been fired (yet), but I have seen several coworkers fired at different jobs. I have kept tabs on them and most seem to have done okay and gotten a different job in the same career field. As a side note, I will say that MOST firings I've seen, although they may have had something to do with performance or something else, were mainly personal in nature (i.e. the boss simply didn't like the person).
I was only ever "fired" from one position, back when I was much younger.
Customer service position, swing shift (which I ABSOLUTELY loved!). Call volumes obviously low. The company had a clause in the handbook that required supporting customers "...by all forms of communication, including email, fax, telephone, and message boards." We didn't get faxes, we didn't emails. We did get phone calls and we did have message boards.
One day, as it's getting closer to the end of the shift and the call volume drops to like 3/hour, I go out to the message boards for the first time. I see a boatload of customers bashing the company, complaining about service issues, not getting responses. I'm like ok, I'll do it, got nothing better to do. So I start responding and I give my direct line and tell the customers to give me a call so I can try to assist them. Silly things like delayed installers and such that I can easily deal with. I think I got one customer to call. The others I never heard from, for some reason.
A couple of days go by and as I'm clocking in one day, the supervisor walks up and says...
SUP: "did you post on the message boards or something?"
ME: Yeah, why?
SUP: "the floor manager wants to talk to you about it. It sounds like you're in trouble."
SO he escorts me over to his office. I'd never met this guy before, but the conversation goes like this:
MGR: "did you post on the message boards?"
ME: yeah, I was trying to help customers.
MGR: "who told you to do that?"
ME: err, the employee handbook?
MGR: "That's not your job and it's not in the employee handbook!"
ME: (points out the verbiage in the handbook)
MGR: "That doesn't apply to your position!"
ME: I wasn't aware that there was a specific EMPLOYEE handbook for certain roles. Where's the one that applies to mine?
MGR: "There's only one employee handbook, but managing the message boards is for specific employees only!"
ME: Ok, well that wasn't made clear anywhere and I was trying to help neglected customers rather than let them bash our company. Clearly the "specific employees" weren't and aren't doing their job which makes us all look bad.
MGR: "This is serious. We're going to suspend you with pay while this is investigated. We'll call you with the outcome. Oh, and leave your badge."
ME: Ok, well that's fine, should I just not bother coming back?
MGR: "This doesn't mean you've been fired, but we have to follow protocol. We'll let you know what the deal is, but you'll still be paid while you're suspended."
Week goes by, I get a call from the floor manager, telling me to report to the building manager.
MGR: "We have finished our investigation and we are going to terminate your employment effective immediately."
ME: OK.
MGR: "....don't you want to know why?"
ME: I know why, I'm being fired for following what the employee handbook told me to do and apparently, wasn't supposed to do.
MGR: "Didn't the floor manager tell you what the deal was?"
ME: Yeah. He said I wasn't supposed to do message boards.
MGR: "Of course that's acceptable. The real issue is that you added a personal website link."
ME: No, I didn't. I gave my direct contact number here at work and told them to contact me so I could help them.
MGR: "The information we received said that you had given personal information."
ME: Yeah, my "personal" contact number, which is owned by you guys.
MGR: "Well, in light of conflicting information we have to go with what we've been instructed. I've got your final check here. Did you want to add a statement to your file?"
ME: Nope.
MGR: "Why not? It will give you a chance to add your side."
ME: Does my side really make a difference when you've already made a decision regardless of now hearing conflicting information that in fairness should have been taken into consideration prior to any action being taken?"
MGR: "..."
ME: Does a statement really hold any weight when you take three separate actions against a person without due process: you verbally tell me something is wrong, that's fine. But then, in the same meeting, you proceed to suspend me without even giving consideration to my side. Then, you proceed to fire me without even really knowing all the facts. I don't think I want to work for such a fickle company.
Got up and left. Didn't really care anymore. Fun job, "urine" poor management.
I learned a few months later that the supervisor (the one that walked me back), who was gay, had something happen to him by one of the same managers, probably the floor one, that caused him to get fired because of his sexuality (discrimination related). He ended up filing a lawsuit which became class action and won it. I talked to a few of the people I worked with who were shocked I got let go, including that sup, and they all said I should have sued them because it turned out others in the department were posting on the boards without any issue. I wasn't sweating it, and in any event I was only 20 and really didn't understand "employment" anyway. That was my second ever job and I got screwed in both without realizing that they were breaking the law.
I worked a lot of temp jobs at the time and there were times when the contract would not be converted to full time, but that was again because of unethical supervisors/managers. One of which was raided by the FBI for their trouble, after I left. The other shut down a few months later because my position was critical to managing the sales process.
I've been "offered to quit in lieu of being fired", where I chose to quit because I didn't want to really be at the company - that was because of an unethical union that was in collusion with the company to put a glass ceiling on high performing sales reps, where I doubt they really would have fired me, they just didn't want to keep paying me the money I would have ended up making. Yet they still paid me $5000/month after I left for the next 6 months, in back commissions. They knew that if they didn't, they'd be up for a lawsuit. Again, I was young. In hindsight I should have put a poker face on and dared them to fire me which would have set them up for a discrimination lawsuit.
I was fired just before I retired after complaining about how lazy my manager was to his supervisor. His boss told my manager I had complained about him and from that day forward every little mistake I made, real or imagined, was brought up in a variety of written and oral warnings until he had enough paper work to terminate me.
Actually the Head of Human Resources gave me the word that I was being fired and after a short meeting there was a knock on the door and a security guard came in and then escorted me around the office to meeting with a number of company officials. All the while everyone stared at me and laughed at my misfortune. No severance pay or payoff for my vacation balance.
I lost the will to work after that and took Social Security early.
Last edited by good_topics; 01-17-2015 at 11:42 AM..
The first time was my first job out of college, at a communication position at IBM. It was a co-op position that was supposed to have strong mentorship support. My boss had knee surgery the 2nd week I was there, and started working from home. If you are familiar with IBM, it is a cluster****. I rarely even spoke to my boss, expectations were unclear, and I didn't know who to escalate to. So I just fumbled around for a month until the boss came in to the office and told me I wasn't meeting expectations and was fired. I was devastated. I didn't list the job on my resume, and was hired soon thereafter at a small publisher for an editing job. Moved my way up the ladder, changing jobs a couple of times, and became a tech writer. Then the dot com boom crashed.
I ended up finding editing work with a travel publisher. I slogged through for a couple of years, but it was just a bad fit. My supervisor and I didn't get along at all. I had never had that problem at any prior job. One day she heard me bitching about her, and that was pretty much the end. She fired me about two weeks later. It really was for the best. I took a transitional editing job working third shift (ugh), and then 9 months later I was hired as a technical training consultant for a very large consulting firm. My career flourished there and I was promoted multiple times. Now I do something different, but that's another story.
So, it's not the end of the world. One thing that saved me was having good references from people besides my supervisor from the 2nd job. Another director served as a reference, and I kept in touch with a couple of clients that said they would act as references.
I've been fired a few times. The first time I was let go because the manager found some idiot to sleep with him. Hated the job, wasn't trained AT ALL, had no idea what I was doing, and was stressed out -- so all in all it was a good thing.
Second job, I was gaslighted. Office manager wanted her friend to get the position, they hired someone, he got fired. I wasn't good at selling furniture, but they liked me, so they moved me into the position, once again over office manager's friend. I was totally "inept", just like the guy before. Invoices would be filed, but the pieces weren't ordered. I would set up a system, and it wouldn't work. I did my level best, but in the end it didn't work. I was so stressed out, I was glad to go.
Then I found my niche in banking.
About two months later an ex - coworker and I met for lunch. Turned out... they hired someone else for my old job -- once again, not the friend -- and SHE was having trouble, too. She was worse than all of us. Just about the time they were going to let the new girl go, office manager had a family emergency and had to take a small leave. During the leave, one of the bosses filled in for her, and since he was a control freak neatnik and office manager was a slob, he cleaned out her desk....
And found a bunch of invoices she had stashed away. Turned out -- office manager was getting to the office FIRST, going through the Transloc bags, pulling out invoices and putting them in her desk to refile weeks later, so it looked like the person in my position simply filed the invoice without ordering.
After finding this out, the bosses got together and put each invoice with an order (since there wasn't a sync available --this was pre-computer days) and discovered about 30K worth of stuff not ordered -- most of which was within a few weeks of being due.
It would have been nice of them to call me and let me know that it wasn't me -- I wasn't an idiot, but it was water under the bridge and I was very happy where I was.
I was in banking for 13 years, and 17 years ago, my husband and I started a successful janitorial company. We do the work, and it's hard, but honestly, we're going to retire from this fat and sassy....
It was being fired, more like sign this agreement; we will pay you until the end of the year (3 1/2 months).
I was up for a promotion but did all the work and everyone knew the job was mine - until the night before "the decision", a data entry clerk in her 40's with 4 children slept with the Vice President. (I was in my early 20's).
So, the day of "the decision", I came in all excited and late in the day was called to HR. I heard she got the job around 3 PM. I was told by HR that she felt "uncomfortable" about me and wanted it to be "her" department. I was rather stunned, however, I signed the agreement under pressure, went to see an attorney the following week (today you could probably do something).
By that time, my second job was glad to have me more full time and within the next 8 months, I would find myself working for myself. It's quite a story but all the dots lined up; I don't know how I ever did it looking back but my brother and I had 17 great years at our own company which we grew to 34 employees and then sold as the business started changing.
My brother had gotten into another field so I went to work for him and then for myself - now 10 years just on my own.
My greatest fear - working for someone else.
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Led me into self employment
