How to get fired from your first job?
“What are the chances?, you’re 20, in your first job, leaving for the day on a Friday when you have to come back the day after and open the shutter of the damning basement, and you get fired with a day’s notice. One day.”
It’s been my story.
At around 7 PM on May 11, 2018, I found myself walking up to my boss to inform them I’m leaving for the day. He asks me to hold on for a little as he needs to talk. It was unusual, especially because all Saturdays were working. This wasn’t something that was only going to happen two days after on a Monday.
The “founders’ chambers” as he preferred to call them, were not a separate cabin, it was a comparatively large white table that could seat four people comfortably in an area separated by a roughly 5 and a half feet tall gypsum board. I sat right before the partition.
I sit opposite him, and on my left is the other co-founder. As much as I can recall, I didn’t look at her directly during the entire conversation. Still, with my limited peripheral vision, I could make out a face with obvious concern, although it was only subtle till then.
Soon, the subject of the conversation was my lack of enthusiasm conveyed via his limited vocabulary. The guy meant I’m not as keen to work, or my motivations have taken a dip, which they had. Initially, I thought his larger agenda was to get me to talk. Not in a manner that he’s been concerned about how things have changed for the worse. Just to quench his mild or annoying curiosity. Not to find cause to improve the situation. But, to have closure in his head to execute the call he’d already taken.
It progressed how anyone in his position would do it. The keywords to the questions were lack of energy, motivation, performance, liking, reasons, and over time.
He thought he was sophisticated, often validated by those around him, mainly friends and family, and his occasional flirting with customers about to get married. About to get married, because the business at the time mostly sold custom fit ethnic wear you’d pin on Pinterest. And because everybody cannot afford the original designer, you had these players who came to the rescue.
Being an engineer, followed by an MBA and some random internship at one of the Coca-Cola manufacturers was his story tale route to be. He reeked of mediocrity. Even today, if I look back, and recall well, my views on him never changed, even before or after this happened. I would look past the little maturity I had to focus on the unsolved questions I’d asked myself due to my choices for my career.
As the conversation progressed, it started to get obvious. He was as subtle as men staring at your bosom while talking to you. He’d keep going loops around the fact that if there is something which is bothering me, to be let out and maybe it gives me a fighting chance at the feet of the almighty mediocre CEO.
My throat started to choke up a little.
I maintained eye contact, directly but with a fear at the back of my head, I kept saying no, no to an answer, no to more information, no to anything he claimed was true. Sooner, the woman to my left started to tear up a little. What followed was a two-part surprise for me.
He already had an email of termination ready in the drafts, all set to be sent out.
My last day was tomorrow, yes, the day after. The notice I got to serve was one day, seemingly because I was fired at the end of that workday, and they’d need me to tell them what all I’d worked on, including sharing access to them since the CEO couldn’t afford business emails. Everything was on my personal email, and mostly via my still, personal phone no.
I took 26 minutes to reply back.
How much of a problem was this?
By this time, the other person in the equation, who also served zero value in the entire equation had tears rolling down her face. She cared for me, but her stupid heart belonged to the guy who was firing me. I don’t remember saying much, couldn’t, what would I?
There was no Uber Moto for that day, it was a long walk. After all of this, I still had to come the next day, carry my head down, speak at 20% of my volume and do the “KT”.
Deep down, I was fine not having this particular job, the people were good riddance, but the maths wasn’t working out. My rent was ₹6000 barring other expenses, my salary was ₹13500, and I was to be paid ₹5400 for working till the 12th of the month. And this money wasn’t going to come until the next pay cycle. Because you can fire with a notice period of one day, but full and final policies take their due time in a founder team of three, and employee count of three, aside from the masterjees. What further stopped me was having a working machine to actually get a “real” design job.
I didn’t really have friends, even if I did, I wouldn’t reach out. I couldn’t tell my parents, haven’t to this date. My parents have no clue about this. But I had Javed. He was much older, we’d go out to eat Biryani together. We got along because we’d seen people from different cultures, no intoxication, relatively struggling in their careers but we liked what we did or wanted to, at least. I do owe him big for his calmness that night.
My reply to him.
Exactly while writing this, I couldn’t care about the logistics, the changes the day would bring to my life, and how adversely an individual can affect me. None of it mattered, the rent didn’t, the lack of money didn’t, and the next job didn’t. As long as I’d remember this in the future, there would only be one question, okay, I’ve had enough, this doesn’t feel fair, I can be angry, and I can be articulate about it, but am I capable to accept this situation? Do I know what kind of a man I want to be? It dictated my choice of actions and words.
Today, at this age, it’s pretty obvious to make a similar choice, if not you, you’d most likely have people around, or much worse, you’d probably cherish anonymity via Glassdoor.
But then, being 20, it was a huge deal, the fight between staying true to oneself or doing the “bigger” thing.
The day after.
I showed up the next day, was always on time, wearing all black, it was a shirt with the rest as usual. Started as soon as I reached it, made a to-do list, files, spreadsheets, and all the folders. Re-organized them all, improvised what could be done, and transferred over the ownership access.
Took a few additional printouts so they are good with the day-to-day for a while. Today it is maybe ice cream, sometimes alcohol, occasionally the momos, fried shawarma, or biryani they’ve not tried yet but back then all I could afford was toffees. So I did that. Whenever I could, for the masterjee , the adda karigar and unfortunately a situational underage housekeeping kid at the time.
Apart from the decision-makers, nobody else knew what was happening, so I’d prepare to say my last goodbyes, which a handshake was more than enough, no words would come out that day. To my surprise, I see the masterjee with the most leverage in the organization ready to fight for my employment, his words loosely translated to “they won’t find a more suitable person than me”. But what’s amusing is, he thought my job was to send shipments out. Every time I see a single-handed tape dispenser, I still get a chuckle or two out of it. Looking at how far I’d come but the question is still why the fuck would I start the race so far behind?
I told everyone it was fine, in few words and somewhat teary eyes. I’d go up, take the kid with me, buy the toffees and tell him to share with everyone, and while I was done doing so, the tears started rolling down. In front of me, I saw a confused, red hot angry and stupidly emotional young man. So furious, he was ready to go punch the cause of it all right in the face. I’d pull him closer, hugged him and told him I have to be on my way. Haven’t seen him since.
So how did I get fired?
It doesn’t take a lot, we can maybe do this in steps.
Decide not to go to college is better than pursuing neuroscience. Be naive to want to build a music streaming business with indie artists when 18 months down the line spotify enters India.
Fight and be stubborn at home. Put everything you could possibly put on the line for achieving 1.
Fail miserably at it, get back home, apply for an internship and take the one closest to your PG accommodation because you can’t afford a larger commute.
Have a job that doesn’t challenge you, have your existing laptop fried, and still do everything you can at work, mon-sat, 10:30-7:30 because work is mostly what you know.
Get bothered by the shit you have to do, and your co-founders are exes who didn’t/couldn’t get married so deal with a lot of shit they ought to have, get a colleague fired (a story for another time) and eventually not be capable of hiding how miserable this job makes you.
Get fired by the mediocre MBA man.
“I’m not content about any of what happened, but it’s been the fuel to who I am today, at least professionally. Tiny but glad about it.”
