All my life I was taught to study with the purpose of getting a job. Not once was I told what to do or what to expect if I have to let go of that precious job. At a time when the world is living an unprecedented health and economic crisis due to Coronavirus (COVID-19), do you feel prepared for the possibility of getting fired or being laid off?

I know these numbers are scary, but that’s not the goal of this article. The reality is that even without Covid-19, we are all likely to get fired at least once in our career. It can happen to anyone at any age and from any background. For 25-year old me, it was very hard to believe and my first experience getting fired in a stable corporate environment was shocking and devastating. I wished someone had warned me before because I was not prepared and I did not take it well. 

Because there is lack of data in Europe, I will base my research on a 2018 US study of 1,031 men and women who had been fired at some point in their lives. I am no career expert, so I will share with you what I learned from getting fired, with the hope it can help you better prepare for the risk and learn what to expect. If you’ve ever been let go, discharged or made redundant, then you know how difficult getting over your job loss is. 

1. Main reasons why people get fired are not related to behavior

After one year working for a software company, I got bored and needed to move away from the bad relationship with my manager, and learn new skills. While looking for other opportunities, I ended up applying for an internal position and got promoted to this higher level job.

This meant significantly higher salary, exciting new perspectives and I even got to hang out with top management. It was my definition of success at the time: finally, my studies were paying off. Never did I imagine that 6 months later, the learning, progress and work I had done was coming to an end.

“I realized that I need a much more senior person. We are not firing you, we want you to move back to your old role.”

I got the news over the phone, no warnings, no preliminary signs I was about to get fired, not even when I had a performance review (the week before). I was never late, did my job on time, we did not have any budgetary cuts, none of the reasons for getting fired listed below applied to me. Out of shock, I was incapable of saying anything on the phone.

Firstly, because I was not alone in the room (she didn’t have the decency of telling me beforehand to isolate myself), and that’s not the kind of conversation you want anyone to witness. Secondly, because it made such little sense that I was speechless. So, introvert me quietly accepted the decision over the phone, left the office and went to the nearest park to cry my brains out.

2. Despite strong labor laws, anyone can get fired unreasonably

She said she was not firing me, instead she wanted me to move back to my old role, where she felt “I would be more needed”. First of, that’s a different speech from “I need a more senior person”. Then, asking me to move to my previous role still meant I was getting fired from her team. I did not even know moving to another team was a thing.

When I told her, she almost mocked me: “no, you’re not getting fired, Jennifer, you’re just moving elsewhere and of course, you’re keeping the same salary”. Yes, for a job I don’t want to do anymore. I didn’t even get clear answers to why I was being let go. In fact, I was organizing our next team meeting and flying to Copenhagen the very next Monday. When I made my boss realize that, she confusingly replied it was better that I don’t attend. So, firing me looked even more like a very last-minute decision, thus making it even more confusing and unjustified.

Defending myself in the following days was useless. She knew I was junior from the beginning, I did what she asked me, and even got praised doing my job. So what went wrong and when? I never got a clear answer and I could tell my boss had already made up her mind. All that was left to do, was deal with it.

3. Shocker: getting fired is emotionally overwhelming

It was my fault, if I was performing well, they wouldn’t be getting rid of me. Why was I bragging about this promotion in the first place? What was I going to tell my friends and family? Was I eligible for unemployment benefits? At the time, it felt like the end of the world and the end of all my travel, financial and career plans.

I remember even questioning my own person and getting overwhelmed by insecurity and guilt. “My coworkers didn’t appreciate me anyway. I always felt out of place at work and awkward around them. Who was going to hire me now?”. In the end, how people experience being fired depends on their personality. I remember feeling ashamed, confused, frustrated and ultimately angry.

4. Managing your anger determines what happens next

F***. I did nothing wrong. They had no reason to let me go. If they were unhappy, they had 6 months to say something. How dare they send me back to the job I had just quit, without giving me any valuable feedback? I seriously thought about pressing charges, you can’t just fire people with no reason and over the phone. Was I not a human being to them? I looked into my rights and decided to fight back.

I confronted my boss again on the phone and asked her to write me the reasons why I was being let go, and the next steps she imagined for me in an email, as she lived abroad. My goal was to get everything she said on paper, since no one from HR ever talked to me in person and there was no official proof that I was getting fired. All I had, was a phone conversation and this whole thing could have been in my head for all I knew. Obviously, she never sent that justification email. Asking for it felt like the right thing to do. But in the end, it impacted her decision of ignoring my request for a LinkedIn recommendation.

5. Getting fired implies dealing with employee gossip

Going back to work within the next days, I realized that rumors were already spreading. How does a private phone conversation become the office talk on the very next day? I am always impressed by people’s work ethics. I remember precisely being at my desk when my long term toxic coworker (let’s be real, I hated her) approached me (she hated me too), to give me the shocking news that I was getting fired. She was gloating on the inside, and pretending on the outside to be doing me a favor.

Rumors spread to my previous manager, who did not seem unhappy to learn about my misfortune. You would expect a boss to let their employee figure things out, maybe even give some comforting words. Instead, she gave me instructions to start working for her again, the very same day. It only took me a 20-minute talk with her to realize that I would never go back to my old job. That’s when I decided to leave the company, and she decided to  ignore my request for a LinkedIn recommendation.

6. Leaving your company on good terms is complicated

In my case, quitting was out of the question. I needed to get something out of it and negotiated for several weeks with my company to sign a mutually agreed termination of contract. That was the best solution for me, since I was not willing to spend months at the industrial court (after all, I wasn’t being fired in the traditional ways), and wanted to get it over with. I convinced the company to exempt me from working over the next 3 months and still pay me, plus a satisfactory severance package. Finally, I was cutting all ties with this company and their unfair treatment. But it didn’t feel like a win, more like a punishment.

You know what people say: no matter what happens, stay professional and leave on good terms with your employer. Does being professional mean you don’t get to be angry? My definition of professionalism is providing constructive feedback and being supportive for the next steps in employees’ career. Being fired is already painful enough. I’m not saying they should support just every one, but I gave this company two years of my life. Shouldn’t professionalism be reciprocal?

Another thing you can expect when leaving your coworkers is their indifference. If you’re lucky to have made friends with your colleagues, it’s all good, they’ll bid you farewell, offer you meaningful souvenirs and you’ll stay in touch. But other, they probably will not care. Let’s be honest: most of the time, people just move on because nobody is irreplaceable.

7. Getting fired can affect your mental health

I negotiated a good severance package and left the company. It should have felt like a win, but I was resentful. I had money, but my self-esteem was crushed. I am supposed to be the “self-confident” friend in my entourage. But at that time, my disappointment in the corporate industry reached levels that I could not face and a new situation I wasn’t ready to deal with: unemployment.

My situation felt so unique I thought I was the only person in the world facing this. How could I trust anyone in the workplace again? What would I tell my future employers? How was I going to get over my anger, resentfulness and insecurities? I’m not gonna lie, I got depressed for months, cried a lot and isolated myself. I was lucky to get over it, but many people experience Major Depression Disorder (MDD) after losing their job. Which is sad, considering there is a huge unemployment gap between people suffering mental health issues and those who are not.

There is a direct impact of unemployment on mental health. In the US, unemployed people are twice as likely to experience mental health issues as employed. A 2019 study on the German population describes the role of unemployment on how Germans perceive themselves in society (social subjective status).

8. Getting fired will impact your career (in good ways too)

Let’s start with the negative impacts. The bad news is, that women are more likely than men to see the salary in their next job decrease. We already know that the gender pay gap is real, with women in Europe earning 16% less than their male counterparts in 2017. But getting fired can make things worse for women, who saw a 24% decrease in their next salary while men experienced a 1.3% salary increase according to the insurancequotes study. This hits hard when you know it’s easier to get a job when you already have a job.

Thankfully, not everything about getting fired is depressing. The good news is it can impact your career in positive ways. When recovering from your job loss, you want to take time for yourself and rethink your career. Many people start their own business, find a new vocation or start traveling the world. I took a break for myself, traveled to Africa, started new projects and ended up moving to Germany! Yes, there will be hard times, but ultimately, losing your job is not a career killer. You need to find what’s best for you and eventually make the most of it. As a bonus, you’ll have a good story to tell recruiters in your next job search. Isn’t that an inspiring way to go from fired to hired?

As you probably guessed, getting fired was one of the worst moments in my life. When meeting people with similar experiences, I realized I was going to be fine. But I felt the need to share my testimony to raise awareness and tell people what it’s really like. In these crazy times, my feeling is that everybody need to read this, and start making plans for side hustles to make the money flow.

Have you ever been fired? If reading this has helped you reconsider or change your perspectives (especially with Covid-19 layoffs), I’d love to know that in the comments. 

References:

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The Author / L'Auteure

Jane

I’m a twenty-something french-african digital marketer passionate with travel, video games, technology. I write about my experience as a woman, as a black woman, as a woman at work, as a black woman at work, as a black woman who travels… Well, I think you get it, and I hope you can relate to my stories because I write to empower and inspire other women to share theirs.

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