What It Feels Like To Be Fired

An insider view of the hot seat

It was a Monday morning.

No different from any other Monday.

I arrived at 8:00 AM, unlocked my office door, and flicked on the lights setting my travel mug to the left and keys to the right of my keyboard.

I pulled out one black pen and one red pen from the tray of assorted writing utensils, highlighters, and paperclips and set those on top of my bound notebook.

My schedule was full that day, as it always was on Mondays.

I cleared out my inbox, sent on tasks for my team, adjusted dashboards, updated timelines, and prepared myself for the onslaught of back-to-back 30-minute Teams meetings that cascaded down the calendar visible on monitor 2.

I had a regularly scheduled 1:1 with my boss at 2:00 PM that day. Nothing out of the ordinary and I thought little of it.

My mind had already moved into tomorrow, into the remainder of the week, and on to the next month’s tasks and priorities. Planning of this nature requires you to autopilot the day you’re in; attend the meetings on your schedule for the given day and focus on the next.

That’s how you stay ahead, that’s how you keep afloat; letting the meetings dictate the day-to-day so brain power can be reserved for downstream thinking. The days become robotic; the rituals predictable.

But every once in a while.

A failed activity, missed deadline or some other critical impasse grinds that momentous flow to an excruciating halt. Like a highway pileup or a train whose linked cars are jack-knifing into one another in an unstoppable chain of collisions.

In those moments, the whiplash of being yanked from the future back to the present can be severe and disorienting.

I take my lunch from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM. Leftover pesto pasta and shredded chicken.

I check my teeth for any lingering spices. Crushed basil is uncomfortably similar to glitter in its ability to cling, with such persistence, to everything. I’d hate for someone to see me so unkempt; so unrefined. So human. How embarrassing that would be.

I finish out another meeting, follow up on a few more emails, and head to my 1:1 at 2:00 PM. I walk into that little partitioned room where my boss sits, paperwork laid out in front of him. To his right is an HR rep.

I set my notebook and pens on the table next to my phone. These meetings usually involve project updates, strategy planning, and general catchup. But the nature of a one-on-one is that it’s exactly that. One on one. The presence of a third uninvited party is usually an etiquette misstep; their presence mostly unwelcome unless both parties agree to their attendance.

I went from annoyed, to puzzled, to concerned.

My stomach turned over and my brain began frantically searching for an escape. A way out. A family emergency I could run to. Something, anything to delay what I knew was coming.

Anticipation is cruel.

It’s a highlighter, an amplifier; making the good better, the bad worse. Beautiful moments framed around the longing and hoping and fulfillment of joyous expectations. Terrible moments entombed in dark shrines to hide, like scars, forever in our chambered minds.

And though my brain had slowed time to a crawl, those words still came.

“Termination, effective immediately.”

I didn’t understand the justifications. But I didn’t need to. I was given 2 stapled sheets of paper. Black inky words covering their front and back. I pretended to read them. I nodded when asked if I understood.

The open spaces underscored with dotted unrelenting requests for signature, those I signed. And I dated.

Like a tombstone set on a hill so all could see it.

At that moment I felt such shame. Such oppressive undeniability; my mind trying and failing to rationalize what had just happened. I worked through every phase of delusion, scheming to come up with a trick, a lie, a pause so I could think of a way to escape this inescapable fate.

Until finally I had but one option: to accept what had been laid out before me.

The meeting was quick.

I was escorted back to my office. I was supervised while I packed up my belongings, my photos, my speakers, my desk trinkets, and little snacks hidden in the compartments of my drawers.

This, I thought, was far more embarrassing than a mouth full of leftover pesto.

The HR rep insisted on helping me collect my things. That, somehow, made it worse. As if my inadequacy extended beyond my work and was simply a reflection of who I was.

I looked at my calendar. It was woefully unaware that I would no longer be its keeper, or rather, its slave. It no longer had a body to animate, a mind to hijack and see its extensions realized.

It was full, still. Mocking me with that lingering call to attend to its needs.

Meetings that were supposed to follow this one. Events I had planned to orchestrate later. Levers I had purposed to pull, kicking off a string of complex matrixed activities.

And the sticky notes that covered my desk like a landscape of blues and pinks and yellows and oranges, remained. And those that hung from my monitors with passwords and addresses and phone numbers like shingles.

It felt wrong to let those things go.

They had been such an extension of me. My every day. My rituals that pushed the days along. The normalcy that defined security and predictability in life.

But I had no choice.

So, I followed the motions, robotic; thinking about tomorrow, the remainder of the week, the month to come. As I had done many times before, many Mondays before, but in a wildly detached context; a perversion of strategy and planning.

A coping.

Insurance, unemployment, unpaid bills, loans in queue, mortgage, my children’s school, their tap dance and theatre classes. My dog who needed to be groomed and was scheduled for neutering 2 months out. How long my severance would last, what subscriptions I needed to cancel.

My wife, who trusted me, supported me, relied on me.

My coworkers who wouldn’t see me again, whom I had spoken to that same day about plans and company events and projects. Those who knew me professionally, those who knew me personally.

To say I was lost is an understatement; though, the feeling was something more akin to escaping or detaching. Denial twines itself around these sentiments. So does betrayal and, eventually, anger.

Reality is punishing.

And as hard as it is, we have to face it. We have to pivot and change when the world asks us to pivot and change. There WILL be a tomorrow. There always is.

I learned in these moments that sometimes it IS best to focus on today.

The implosion of my world came as a shock. Everything around me seemed to collapse. But this is what forced adaptation looks like. And if I were to be truly honest about it all, I could make myself stronger from it.

That want is hard to find, though, because giving up is easier and hiding protects our ego and denial keeps the locus of control wide.

All of the things that protected me would, inevitably, keep me weak. So I had to let go of the shame to gain hold of the new tools I needed to succeed.

And this is the dichotomy of trial and growth. One is not without the other.

We don’t need to understand the fullness of what happens to us. But we do need to own it. That is the only way to live a life capable of peace.

From this, I AM stronger than I was before. More thoughtful, more resilient, more circumspect about life; my life.

In the dark we find light and the dark isn’t so scary anymore.

Cheers, folks.

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Tony