FIRED

What do you do when you have been fired from a job especially when it comes as a complete surprise and you feel it was unjustified? After the initial shock wears off, or maybe while it is still there as a cushion, you consider ways to get your job back; you wonder what it is that you might have done that was so wrong; and you try to decide if it is really grounds for being fired. Once you have done that, you might consider if it is worth filing a wrongful termination suit. At some point, when the initial shock finally does wear off, you might even shed a few tears; although, it is entirely possible that crying requires a certain amount of energy that you do not necessarily possess at the moment. Chances are, you fall into a deep sleep, and when you awaken, you bake yourself a pan of brownies and contemplate all of the options you considered from the moment you found out you were fired. You might even decide that it is a good idea to update your resume and start job hunting while you are at it. I did all of the above.

Being fired has to be one of the scariest experiences that I have ever endured. Though I have another job, losing one of them was devastating. I worried that I might never be able to find another job due to the stigma of being fired. I was 35 years old, and I had never been fired before. I did not like the idea that I was setting a new trend. But the question was why had I been fired? It was suggested that I had breached my company's confidentiality policy, but I hadn't. I made a silly statement that did not hint at, allude to, or suggest anything about anything. Apparently, some overzealous person took umbrage by what I had said, and no one stopped long enough to consider that it was a whole lot of nothing. But what could I do about it?

After giving it some serious consideration, I realized that I had done absolutely nothing wrong. I considered filing a wrongful termination suit against the company, but the truth was that it was a temporary job in the first place, and it was not going to last much longer anyway. It would take longer to go through the ordeal of a court proceeding. Besides, I did not want to give myself the reputation of being a troublesome employee. I did not like the idea of having to admit that I had been fired, regardless of the reason, but it seemed much simpler in the long run than to file a lawsuit. And I knew that I could explain the situation to future employers if I had to, and they could see for themselves that I had not done anything wrong. In fact, my supervisors from my job had offered to give me recommendations in the future. Therefore, rocking the boat seemed like the wrong thing to do.

I knew from the beginning that this job was only temporary. I also knew that I needed more of an income than my primary job offered. Therefore, I had been keeping my resume current, and I was already job hunting. The only thing I had to do was switch the job I had lost from current employment to employment history. And then I had to figure out what I was going to say exactly to prospective employers when they asked if I had ever been fired. At that point, I put my job search into overdrive. The economy still seems pretty bad, even if they say things are getting better, and jobs are hard to come by. In the long run, the two best pieces of advice I could offer myself were to not allow getting fired to get me down, and to not eat an entire pan of brownies. Nothing good could ever come of that.