You're fired!

I was in a meeting with a guy the other day and he said somebody had been “outplaced.” I asked him what the hell that meant, and he said, “Well, there was a re-organization, and she was impacted.”

I said, “Are you saying she was fired?” He looked at me for a moment, then said with some discomfort, “Yes. She’s no longer with us.”

Whoa, wait a second. She’s dead? No, no, he said. She has moved on to another opportunity. Oh, I said, so she quit. Well, he said, not voluntarily. How can you quit if it’s not voluntarily?

Bottom line, she was fired. A lot of people are getting fired these days. I’ve been fired a few times in life, and it’s not a pleasant thing.

Why is it so hard for people to say, “You’re fired”? In sports, when a coach is fired, they always say, “We decided to go in a different direction.” In business, it’s often “Your services are no longer needed.” At least they don’t add, “But I’d still like to be friends.”

People can fire you in different ways. When I got fired from this great big bank with a red-white-and-blue logo, my boss came into my office, sat down and said, “Mark, there is no longer a place for you in public relations.”

Well, OK, I said, that’s cool. So where do I work now? Can I be one of the people who counts the money? Can I be a security guard? I always wanted to have a job where I could carry a gun and shoot people.

It turns out, she wasn’t really there to tell me that I was getting a cool new job, because she just sat there and repeated impassively that there was no place for me and refused to make eye contact. Then we had the following conversation:

Me: So what does this mean?
Soulless Corporate Idiot: You know what it means.
Me: No, I don’t.
Soulless Corporate Idiot: I believe you do.
Me (feigning shock): Are you saying that I’ve been fired?
Soulless Corporate Idiot: There’s no place for you in the organization.
Me: Come on, I’m getting fired. You can say it.
Soulless Corporate Idiot: I have to go.

It felt more like being dumped by a girlfriend than being fired. You know, how they tell you that it’s just not working out, and it’s not you, it’s them, and they think you’re a great guy, when what they really mean is, “I’ve started seeing a guy who drives a nicer car than you do.” Not that this ever happened to me.

Anyway, that particular bank has gone in the crapper ever since they fired me, so there’s a lesson learned. I was also fired by a grocery store chain once, and it’s since gone out of business. I was also let go by a PR agency that is also no longer in operation. I hope my current employer thinks long and hard about this if they ever decide I need to be outplaced.