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Getting Fired? Ex-Marine Told Me He Cried and Sought Therapy

The Said Ex-Marine also Fought in Multiple Combats while on Active Duty

By Ji Na KhananishoPublished 2 years ago 6 min read
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Getting Fired? Ex-Marine Told Me He Cried and Sought Therapy
Photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash

Just by a show of hands, who does all of the following?:

  1. Who, as a newly-minted graduate, signs a 30-year mortgage with 5% down payment for your very first condo, across the street from your new workplace even before your orientation is over, after persistently convincing your spouse that it is the right thing to do?
  2. Who volunteers for overtime shifts whenever your boss asks you?
  3. Who tries to wear different hats all the time that are not even described under qualification and responsibility sections for the position you applied, such as cleaning, checking inventories, fixing stuff around where no one cares to look, and etc.?
  4. Who actively asks your boss for feedbacks and what you can do to "not get fired" and to prove that you are a valuable asset to the company?
  5. Who obsessively thinks about how to improve yourself for the good of the company even on your off-days and willing to change your lifestyle for the benefit of the company?
  6. Who tearfully agrees to drop out of school when your boss half-threateningly asks you to and focus on work for at least another year (just a year? Wink, wink.)? After that meeting, although you still end up not dropping out and successfully graduating from graduate school many years on time, who had to keep that a super-secret, like how it is in North Korea, and was never able to use "I have 3 papers due this week and 4 final exams next week" as an excuse because, from their point-of-view, you already dropped out?
  7. Who verbalizes to your boss how grateful you are even for the meager paychecks and no raise or bonus in sight because you work for the experience and opportunity and not for the money?
  8. Who goes out of your way to complement your coworkers on their successes and achievements, small and big, especially in front of the boss, by saying, "You are my role model!" without any of them being seemingly appreciative of your gesture.

I HAVE!

And, one day, out of nowhere, while I was working 3 people's jobs because one called in and two resigned shortly before and had not been able to fill the open positions, yet, the Regional Manager calls me into this office that I have never been in... and surprise, surprise, my direct boss and the Vice President of the company were all sitting in there in a round table with a recorder turned on!

To make the story short, their explanations to my actions of "going above and beyond" were the following:

  1. "No, buying a condo next to the building is not why you are here in this company. You KNOW you have nowhere else to go."
  2. "No, that's not why you are working overtimes. You want more money."
  3. "You KNOW you are trying to make up for your shortcomings by working extra stuff that nobody asks you to do." Or, instead, questioning me with, "I can see that you are busy, but what are you REALLY doing all the time?"
  4. "No, you are not taking initiatives by asking for feedbacks. You are genuinely scared and petrified of being let go of this company."
  5. "Who asks you to do that on your off-days?" (And these are the same people who previously asked me to drop out of my graduate school program that I meant to work on during my off-days, and instead, focus on work.")
  6. See #5.
  7. "You KNOW you are not worth the big paycheck and you are just glad that you have a job and that's why you are not asking for more."
  8. "Well, I am glad that you respect your colleagues because you'd better kiss their butts to get something out of them, which in turn, that expert knowledge will need to be used for the good of the company, although you will probably never get ahead like your colleagues have."

And then, they gave me two options: 1. Resign or 2. Get fired and blacklisted from the organization. Of course, I chose the former, instead. It just sounded better. That was three years ago.

Thank God, me being a savvy employee, I always have two or more jobs, just in case. Never put all your eggs in one basket, remember? Following the "resignation," I actually made more money working overtime in my other job that I had. (Yes, I had been working in 2 jobs and being a full-time graduate student all along!) Within 2 weeks, I was called in for a very easy, pleasant interview and within another 2 weeks, I was happily starting a new job that paid 30% more than the previous one.

And now, since I finally graduated from the same graduate program that my boss tried so hard to make me drop out, (by the way, it turns out, she only has a 2-year associate degree, which I didn't know at the time,) I no longer work as my old position anymore.

Just a couple of weeks ago, one of my colleagues turned out to be the same age as I am and we struck up a conversation right away. He told me that he was a Marine in active duty before holding this current position. And he told me that once he was let go of from a position that he thought he very well qualified. Afterwards, he fell into depression, started having doubts about himself and sought out therapy. He cried and wept during sessions and repeatedly asked himself the tormenting question: "What did I do wrong?"

Why am I writing about my shameful and traumatic termination experience?

Because I want to talk to you, my dear readers, who are taking all the blames and getting laid off, or relieved, or demoted, or fired, or terminated at this very moment; whose exit is not so pretty and glorious as your entry had once been; who had to be cut loose for the good of the organization but at the expense of your ever-ambitious and innocent heart; whose ex-colleagues all moved on without you and you suddenly became a coffee-break topic:

YOU ARE VALUABLE! And that you deserve respect and adoration for trying so hard; for putting up with capitalism, "fake-it-till-you-make-it," "the-nice-guys-always-finish-last'' nonsense in a culture where being humble is viewed as weakness. You are evolving and learning. Everybody goes through a learning curve, sometime steep and sometimes gentle. Just because they are in powerful positions now doesn't mean they did everything right. The opportunity presented itself when they were ready. You make yourself ready. That's all there is to it.

Oh, WAIT! Wait a second! Well, there is one thing I did not do, or could not do, rather. At the time, I was trying to save up some money as much as I could for my newly installed mortgage payments, tuition fees, and etc.. I never really brought in any tasty homemade foods or lavish gifts or treated my coworkers with pizzas on casual occasions, except for maybe when there was officially announced office pot-lucks for God-knows-what reasons. Maybe that's what did it. This is what got to them. Now I know that's why I got fired and now it's all my fault.

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About the Creator

Ji Na Khananisho

A wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a colleague and an aspiring author. Adore David Foster Wallace, Charlotte Bronte, Thomas Hardy and Khaled Hosseini. And lastly, I am the happiest logophile and logomaniac you will ever meet.

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