In August of 2019, I was fired for the first time ever from a job, in a career I had been building for 15 years. Over a year later, as I reflect on this time in my life, the feelings are still as raw. However, today as I examine the circumstances surrounding the “event” and the subsequent events to come after I was tossed out, I find it to be one of the greatest stories of my life. It plays out like a true psychological thriller. Here is how my career unraveled on that fateful day.
4 years before the “event”, I was having lunch with a coworker and mentor and sharing a truth only those close to me knew at the time. I HATED my job. I mean I really LOATHED it. Not the company but my actual job. I was panicked and full of anxiety about losing myself and my dreams. My mentor was shocked. He said he would have never guessed it because I behaved and worked as if I loved it. While I was slightly relieved my façade was holding firm, it only elevated my distress at how far I was going to hide the truth. I mean this was Oscar level acting to cover up the tremendous level of hate I was harboring. I did not know it at the time but saying it to him in my moment of complete transparency had set in motion the death of my career.
I left that job a few months later and landed at a company which can only be described as a true relic of the Jim Crow era. I have some crazy stories from this brief period of my life. My experience at this job sent me jumping headfirst from the pot and into the fire. It was like a broken home and I was a runaway child who in the end landed in the hands of Satan. Satan was the Treasurer of a mid-size legal tech company. My interview with him left a bad taste in my mouth but my direct manager, the Accounting Manager, was the perfect boss for me. I had convinced myself if I did not have to deal with the Treasurer directly it would be fine. I could coast under the Accounting Manager for a few years while I built up the new business I had started with my husband.
The office was a small, cold space with a modern, open cubicle floor plan. There was zero privacy. I am sitting at a desk facing my manager and 2 other accountants with a small partition that stopped at our shoulders, so full necks and heads popped up like tulips blooming out of a planter. It reminded me of an elementary school set up where they put 4 desks together facing each other so you could do group work. It was so quiet you could hear your neighbor breathing. Everyone eats at their desks, no one took a break. It was a prison. I am an introvert however being in a department and office full of them allowed me to see there is absolutely a spectrum for every personality trait. I am the type of introvert who is constantly surrounded by extroverts and my mind treated their constant chatter like white noise. It’s noisy but in a soothing way. We can dissect this topic later, back to the firing.
My job was to pay the bills and keep track of the physical cash in several bank accounts. At some companies it is easier to do than others. When it is your job to pay the bills, you want to be at a company that makes enough money each month to pay all of them. Unfortunately, this was not the case at my current company or the previous one for the matter. However, this fact was largely a secret shared only between me, the Accounting Manager (My Boss), Assistant Controller, Treasurer and CFO. Just before the end of my first year, the company was purchased by a new investor and I was offered a huge retention bonus if I stayed for 6 months. I found out the day after I signed the deal, they had fired my boss. He was still the best thing about this job to me and I was devastated. I was now working directly with Satan. I would soon find out how deep the rabbit hole could go.
The Treasurer was holding me personally responsible for keeping the lights on and he made sure I took all the blame when we fell short. At first, despite the fact I still HATED my job and was constantly working on my escape plan, I was managing the tasks well. I had figured out how to rob Peter to pay Paul and keep things afloat. The Treasurer never showed gratitude, instead he piled on more. If I put out 5 fires, he would throw 6 more at me. He talked down to me and threatened my job. When I complained he would reply that I was making excuses. However, they continued to collect less and less money each month, my team took on huge loads of extra work through acquisition and I was severely understaffed for most of the next year. I was working 60 hours a week with a 20-hour commute. I could go days without seeing my kids. My husband was perpetually angry with me. He kept asking me why I was doing all this work when they did not appreciate it. My response was always, I had to do it, or they would fire me. Eventually, I reached a level of complete burnout. I was a wreck.
I played the last card I had in my arsenal. I went to HR and told them about the money issues. She asked me what I wanted. I replied, “I don’t want anything, I just want them to leave me alone.” I told her they can pay me to leave. She nodded in understanding. It was not so much a demand as a foretelling of a future that awaited me. The same fate my manager and many others had suffered, and I knew awaited me and the remaining leadership. The truth was out and firing me would not fix their money issues. It would only buy them time. The Main Event happened a few months later, the day I returned from a much needed and deserved vacation. They paid me to leave. Of course, the bastards let me work an entire day first. They even had the nerve to ask me if I would stay on for a few months and help them transition my job to my replacement. I told them no, signed the papers and they wired me my 6-week severance. The cherry on top was they canned my whole leadership team 4 months later including Satan, the Treasurer.
Sometime after that lunch with my mentor 4 years ago, I had begun to walk away from my relationship with my career. I burned every bridge, I stopped learning new things, I stopped aiming for perfection. I stopped working so hard. I started jumping from one company to another. It seemed I was picking all the wrong places to go to work. I just stopped giving a shit, period. I hated it so much, I believe I set out to completely kill it. I succeeded fantastically. I never felt I was in control of my fate and yet I know I was the one who agreed to every bad decision I had made the past 4 years. Even though I was not responsible for the way I was treated; I had put myself in harms way. I continued to pick worse and worse places and put myself in the most impossible situations. I set myself up for failure. I am stubborn and I know the only way I could walk away is if the choice was taken away from me. I was in a battle with myself.
I spent the next 6 weeks of unemployment, planning my next career. I finally knew exactly what I wanted for myself. I would love to say I went off and started doing all the things I was passionate about right away. Nope, it doesn’t always work that way in life. What I can say is I planted a lot of seeds and I made some sacrifices to build the life I want in the future. I am still doing accounting work, but I took a step down from managing, I work less hours and I spend the extra time building my dreams. I no longer feel reckless and out of control. I am focused. This blog is a manifestation of those dreams.
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