“Hey, do you have a minute? Please come to my office for a minute.”
Unless the call is from your boss’s secretary who you’re secretly dating, there’s a 99 percent chance you’ll be fired from your company in the next five to 10 minutes.
In the United States, it’s not so humiliating to get fired; just about everyone who comes out of the workforce has experienced it. The reason for being fired is sometimes not that you’re not doing a good job, but rather that you’re doing too good a job and your boss is paying you too much, and he’d rather use the money he spent to hire you to hire three or four more rookies to feel secure, so what can you do about it? But when I first started working, I did not understand. The first job I did, the company’s sales to the boss for seven or eight years, probably hinting at a higher share, the boss simply dismissed him. I thought he must be very frustrated, so I called to comfort. I wished he had fired the boss instead of the boss firing him; but his reaction was much to my surprise: “Are you kidding? How could I possibly quit on my own?” He thought my idea was totally unbelievable. I later learned that according to the U.S. labor law, you can only receive relief if you are fired. Therefore, unless the next job has been negotiated, people generally never quit voluntarily, no matter how unhappy they are. The company’s main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers.
It’s not easy to be fired suddenly, of course. To avoid it, you need to be sensitive in general. The average person can always recall, in retrospect, more or less the signs that the boss was going to lay people off, such as the start of mutterings in the company, the boss canceling the free butter and bread on Friday mornings, and the freshly brewed coffee being replaced by instant. This is when you should let your sixth sense come alive. It’s better to be prepared than to sit on the sidelines. You can send your resume to headhunters, or ask your friends for other job opportunities. And the most important thing is to move everything you think is important out of your office or cubicle as soon as possible without showing your face; because firing may not hurt you much, what will hurt you, especially your feelings, is if your boss announces your firing followed by another order: “Someone will leave the building with you now. ” At that point, whether you’re embarrassed or angry, there’s no right to protest.
By law, a company can terminate an employee without giving you another chance to go back to the office, and you don’t have the right to go back to your seat and pack your things. Even if it’s something you think is your own, under the terms of the contract you signed with the company in the first place, everything belongs to the company as long as it’s in the company. The wife of one of my former bosses, who had been a department manager at a famous investment bank for nearly 20 years, was fired and was “escorted” out of the building by security guards on the spot, and was not even allowed to take her sweater and family photos that she had left in the office to keep her warm.
This kind of extreme story is more common in companies like investment banks or law firms, where client information is more sensitive and you don’t feel aggrieved if you know a little bit about corporate law; but in places like ours, where there aren’t a lot of corporate secrets, it’s the escorting out that often hurts you more because it seems like a simple insult. A young designer colleague of mine, who had been strong and smiling when she received her termination notice, finally wept when her supervisor stopped her from taking her business card case from her desk. “This is my first job, this box of business cards is all I have accumulated, without it, how can I start my second job?” She cried out in aggravation, but all of us old timers felt bad for her naivety, but we also all knew that the next time she was fired, she would definitely not stage this scene.
The longer you work in general, the more stuff you have piled up in the office. Tax returns, tape recorders, sneakers, mirrors, lipstick, hand polish, women’s items, even wedding rings – some people have almost half their home stored away in the office. A small reminder: transfer items beforehand, do it as stealthily as possible, do not completely empty it all at once, especially the things on the desk should not be moved greatly, so as not to attract the attention of the boss or the boss’s informants.