What I've learnt from being fired

A new page, new beginnings, a new opportunity and privilege; of course, before you start, best to remember what you’ve learnt from the last couple of times you were fired.

You may be fired even before you turn up for work. One time, I was invited by a conservative church to address their congregation. It turns out they decided even before they’d heard me that they were too conservative for my message and canned the invitation.

Sometimes, it’s really not too bad getting the sack, you realize especially after the school run to drop the kids off, and you’re lingering with the paper over a cup of coffee. For a period; then you have to find something worthwhile to do.

Life is about seasons, a season to work a particular job and a season not to. It’s okay not to be a lifer. The fact that, on average, the people at your former workplace have spent between 10 and 20 years working there doesn’t mean you should have spent that amount of time behind bars too.

Principle matters, if only to you. But sometimes it won’t matter to anyone. That soapbox you stood on just before your boss decided to let you go, will be taken out with the next day’s office shredding.

Some people will avoid you, like the plague, fearing that the madness in your head that caused you to get the boot may just be contagious. Ex-colleagues especially will be wary of this affliction; the long nights you worked side-by-side preparing the next day’s board presentation will be long forgotten. And they’ll take collective preventative measures to avoid being contaminated. Standing together against a common enemy will be the new corporate mantra.

Of course, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because the biggest mistake you can make is trying to go back to your old job vicariously by calling ex-colleagues or hanging out with them over Friday lunch.

You’ll learn entrepreneurship, how to row your own boat and make your own luck. You’ll marvel at how you survived with so much mollycoddling in the corporate world and reliance on someone else. Your new middle name is Opportunist.

You and your cutesy idiosyncrasies will be erased. If you’ve managed to get your name or mug up on a wall somewhere – real or virtual - expect to have it taken down soon.

Seriously, forgetting is tough and forgiving is even tougher. But even as you allow yourself to feel the pain of being shafted, you learn that the gangrene that is unforgiving will eat away at your inside and make you utterly useless to yourself and your next boss.

Family matters. And real friends – even the ones who have your back on social networks and those you haven’t met yet.

Don’t be afraid to tell your next potential boss that you were fired – in fact, this level of honesty may stand you in good stead.

It really may not be your fault. You may have been axed because of some butterfly flitting around a corporate office on the other side of the world. Ask the 69 000 people in the Eastern Cape who lost their jobs before Christmas last year.

Ex-banker Sallie Krawcheck suggested after she was pushed out by Bank of America that if you don’t get fired at least once, you’re not trying hard enough. 

But I think the most important thing to remember is: Don’t call the boss anything that ends in h-o-l-e; even if he or she is a free speech proponent. And especially not in the weekly column you’ve just been given. - RAY HARTLE