Good piece Carlos! The funny one though is when it goes the other way. When you’re sure that you’re about to be fired, and you like inwardly steel yourself to be brave as you’re getting fired, and then it turns out to be just a completely normal company meeting.
It's too bad it was over Zoom. Missed opportunity to dramatically turn over a boardroom table while yelling, "I can't work under your sorry constraints! I am a man of imagination! IMAGINATION!!!"
And yeah, this sort of thing will happen on our way to identifying what flourishes in our particular field of writing — which sorts of weird flowers grow there, which definitely don't, and which may flourish with the right amount of love and watering (if we want them to). So this didn't quite grow into what you hoped - that doesn't mean late night or TV doesn't belong in your field (is this metaphor getting old yet?), as I'm sure you know! You obviously have the skill sets for those areas, but even those mediums are broad, right? It's about the *particular* show, its particular sensibilities (you know, its, uh, flowers).
Unfortunately (or fortunately, if one takes an optimistic view of adventure and has a healthily-sized ego), we sometimes have to explore before knowing. We don't know what we don't know. I think it's cool you tried, and I look forward to seeing more of your work in other spaces. I have little doubt you'll make it happen!
Also: I do improv for some of the same reasons, and I notice that it improves my weaknesses *and also* my strengths (it's also made me discover strengths I didn't know were there). There's no going wrong with this choice. And it's fun af.
To the question if we have been laid off a job: It’s hard to have been fired when you never worked. Turns out that’s literally why they fired me! Preposterous…
I love the idea of honing something you gravitate towards and have a knack for already. It sounds, frankly, way more fun than trying to get better at something you're not as keen on.
Great piece. I was fired a few times. Not fun but I understood the reasons. I was an actor and temped. If I had an audition I left early. Companies didn’t like that.
I’m still not over this time roughly 2 years ago when I tried to take up bartending, and just when I thought I got a solid gig, they fired me after 3 days because they never told me I was just a stop gap until the person they actually wanted could join them full time.
I would tell you about my own meeting called “Meeting”, but Phillip Lopate said “never write to settle the score”, and I’d be doing that. Let me just say that I ACTUALLY WON THE GAME because I quit before they fired me.
I thought being a package handler at FedEx would suck because I went to college so as not to be stuck doing manual labor. But people there are way cool, pay & bennies are decent, and it’s only for a few hours in the evenings. And you should see my guns. At 63, I’m in the best shape since my 40s. 💪
One day my boss came in to my office. She looked tired, defeated, and she plopped down and said, Paul, we have to go meet with legal because they want to talk about (the horrible situation we were both been managing together--not involving either of us, just a terrible situation it was our job to try and deal with). I was already having a bad day, this was just the coup de grace, and I remember trailing down the hallway behind her like a condemned man and seriously considered just turning and making a break for the elevators. We walked into the conference room, my eyes downcast, but when I lift them, there's an HR guy there, holding balloons, and a certificate, and a number of smiling close co-workers. I'd won an award.
To this day I don't know why my boss decided to bring me to my absolute lowest emotional state before giving me an award, but the artificial valley she dug certainly made the view from the top of the mountain more vivid. It was the opposite of the trick meeting about something good/neutral only to be a bad thing, but it still left quite the mark.
Oh man, I was actually on the other side of this, as part of an executive team that was told by ownership that we all had to cut heads. It was freaking terrible. I won’t tell you about the people that I had to cut, because you would rightfully doubt that it was as humane as I thought it was, but let me tell you about what happened to one of the other execs. They had to fire a middle-management sales leader and this sales leader knew it was coming, so for several days in a row she didn’t show up to work, didn’t answer her phone, and completely ignored any attempts to contact her. She just let the sales exec twist in the wind … I had to respect what she did. She just wasn’t going to play the game. She finally showed up the next week, cleaned out her office, and left. God, I hadn’t thought about that in years. The whole thing sucked for absolutely everybody, but at least it was pre-Covid, so it was basically all done in person. That made it slightly better.
As one of the many people who I imagine enjoy the heck out of your writing, and do so absolutely because of your big strength in satire, I'm happy that having your ass fired has a nice silver lining.
More importantly, I hope you have added "Albert Einstein, dogshit basketball player" to the Wikipedia page for him.
They could name the meeting "Congratulations on your win!" Or pull out the old "Long-lost millionaire cousin needs your bank account details" one. Never fails.
LOL, this was a great read and you had me locked in by the first paragraph. My ass was recently fired as well but my job isn't remote and it was a total blindside from a narcissist asshole. SIGH. It was a nice place to work, but alas....goodbye. I was angry for a bit, but now I know it was a blessing in disguise, setting me up for the next great thing.
I really enjoyed reading this. And I agree with you, getting fired or letting go of that “perfect job” is often that path to finding something much more better suited anyway.
Good piece Carlos! The funny one though is when it goes the other way. When you’re sure that you’re about to be fired, and you like inwardly steel yourself to be brave as you’re getting fired, and then it turns out to be just a completely normal company meeting.
It's too bad it was over Zoom. Missed opportunity to dramatically turn over a boardroom table while yelling, "I can't work under your sorry constraints! I am a man of imagination! IMAGINATION!!!"
And yeah, this sort of thing will happen on our way to identifying what flourishes in our particular field of writing — which sorts of weird flowers grow there, which definitely don't, and which may flourish with the right amount of love and watering (if we want them to). So this didn't quite grow into what you hoped - that doesn't mean late night or TV doesn't belong in your field (is this metaphor getting old yet?), as I'm sure you know! You obviously have the skill sets for those areas, but even those mediums are broad, right? It's about the *particular* show, its particular sensibilities (you know, its, uh, flowers).
Unfortunately (or fortunately, if one takes an optimistic view of adventure and has a healthily-sized ego), we sometimes have to explore before knowing. We don't know what we don't know. I think it's cool you tried, and I look forward to seeing more of your work in other spaces. I have little doubt you'll make it happen!
Also: I do improv for some of the same reasons, and I notice that it improves my weaknesses *and also* my strengths (it's also made me discover strengths I didn't know were there). There's no going wrong with this choice. And it's fun af.
To the question if we have been laid off a job: It’s hard to have been fired when you never worked. Turns out that’s literally why they fired me! Preposterous…
I love the idea of honing something you gravitate towards and have a knack for already. It sounds, frankly, way more fun than trying to get better at something you're not as keen on.
Great piece. I was fired a few times. Not fun but I understood the reasons. I was an actor and temped. If I had an audition I left early. Companies didn’t like that.
"the improv classes I was taking" This will help your writing. Writing is all improv : )
I’m still not over this time roughly 2 years ago when I tried to take up bartending, and just when I thought I got a solid gig, they fired me after 3 days because they never told me I was just a stop gap until the person they actually wanted could join them full time.
I would tell you about my own meeting called “Meeting”, but Phillip Lopate said “never write to settle the score”, and I’d be doing that. Let me just say that I ACTUALLY WON THE GAME because I quit before they fired me.
This is a bit close to the bone, because I have been called to a meeting and might be about to get fired, but I’m still laughing inside VERY hard.
I thought being a package handler at FedEx would suck because I went to college so as not to be stuck doing manual labor. But people there are way cool, pay & bennies are decent, and it’s only for a few hours in the evenings. And you should see my guns. At 63, I’m in the best shape since my 40s. 💪
One day my boss came in to my office. She looked tired, defeated, and she plopped down and said, Paul, we have to go meet with legal because they want to talk about (the horrible situation we were both been managing together--not involving either of us, just a terrible situation it was our job to try and deal with). I was already having a bad day, this was just the coup de grace, and I remember trailing down the hallway behind her like a condemned man and seriously considered just turning and making a break for the elevators. We walked into the conference room, my eyes downcast, but when I lift them, there's an HR guy there, holding balloons, and a certificate, and a number of smiling close co-workers. I'd won an award.
To this day I don't know why my boss decided to bring me to my absolute lowest emotional state before giving me an award, but the artificial valley she dug certainly made the view from the top of the mountain more vivid. It was the opposite of the trick meeting about something good/neutral only to be a bad thing, but it still left quite the mark.
Oh man, I was actually on the other side of this, as part of an executive team that was told by ownership that we all had to cut heads. It was freaking terrible. I won’t tell you about the people that I had to cut, because you would rightfully doubt that it was as humane as I thought it was, but let me tell you about what happened to one of the other execs. They had to fire a middle-management sales leader and this sales leader knew it was coming, so for several days in a row she didn’t show up to work, didn’t answer her phone, and completely ignored any attempts to contact her. She just let the sales exec twist in the wind … I had to respect what she did. She just wasn’t going to play the game. She finally showed up the next week, cleaned out her office, and left. God, I hadn’t thought about that in years. The whole thing sucked for absolutely everybody, but at least it was pre-Covid, so it was basically all done in person. That made it slightly better.
As one of the many people who I imagine enjoy the heck out of your writing, and do so absolutely because of your big strength in satire, I'm happy that having your ass fired has a nice silver lining.
More importantly, I hope you have added "Albert Einstein, dogshit basketball player" to the Wikipedia page for him.
They could name the meeting "Congratulations on your win!" Or pull out the old "Long-lost millionaire cousin needs your bank account details" one. Never fails.
LOL, this was a great read and you had me locked in by the first paragraph. My ass was recently fired as well but my job isn't remote and it was a total blindside from a narcissist asshole. SIGH. It was a nice place to work, but alas....goodbye. I was angry for a bit, but now I know it was a blessing in disguise, setting me up for the next great thing.
I really enjoyed reading this. And I agree with you, getting fired or letting go of that “perfect job” is often that path to finding something much more better suited anyway.