Why Lose Your Fear Of Being Fired?

In one famous Greek story Damocles, a court flatterer, a dude hired just to fawn over the master, complimented Dionysius, the rich and comfortable big-wig tyrant he worked for, regarding Dionysius’s many luxuries: the money, the clothing, the jewelry, and the best foods.

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The story continues to explain that after talking the tyrant Dionysius agreed to switch places with his hireling. After making the switch Damocles was having a pretty great time bossing people around and ordering his Greek salad, when he glances up, and see that there is a sword hanging over his head, hanging by a single horse hair. The boss, Dionysius explained that this was how it was to live his life. As a leader, as a tyrant, there were lots of people that wanted him dead. He had to enjoy all that he had knowing the whole time that life and death was suspended by a thread. Dionysius claimed that he lived under a constant unrelenting threat.

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For me, and for many fear filled people, the threat of being fired, is like living with a sword suspended over our head. The fear of being fired is a constant unrelenting threat. Being fired is the big hammer that the company has over the employees. What do we call being fired? Terminated. Given the Ax. Heads’ll roll.

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I’m weeks away from being 58 years old and I have never been fired. I have been hassled by management until I chose to quite, and once I was given an the order that I could only come back if my shrink said it was OK, and my shrink wouldn’t say that, but fired, no. I’ve been working almost non-stop for over 40 years, never been fired, and yet being fired has been one of the dominate fears in my life.

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Being fired is the ultimate threat from management and we have seen people fired, sometime brutally, on TV shows, so naturally, a whole lot of us have tacitly accepted that being fired is a terrible thing and should be avoided at all cost. The problem with this fear is that it leads to accepting sometimes appalling conditions at work and going to extraordinary lengths to keep our jobs.

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"My way or the highway.”
"Do it or else."
"I can replace you before you clean your desk out."

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People who live in fear of being fired tend to:

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. . . take crap from management
. . . carry out unethical or immoral orders
. . . put up with bullying belittling, and harassment including but not limited to sexual harassment
. . . go along to get along
. . . swallow their own disgust
. . . compromise their own values
. . . silence their real opinions
. . . accept low, inequitable, and just plain ole unfair salaries, and
. . . kiss ass until they become literal brown-nose-ers

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Interviews with Lehman Bros employees indicate that many had a feeling something was wrong, long before the collapse of their company. Many Enron employees who lost their investments and retirement, had sense something was wrong long before the bottom fell out and the criminal and fiscally irresponsible acts of their company were exposed. How many of those employees were going along, not voicing concerns, following orders because they wanted to be loyal, and were also afraid of losing their jobs?

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So I say it’s time we take the stigma out of being fired. If you can rid yourself of that threat (or at least reduce it greatly) then you grant yourself much wider latitude at work. Trust me, our workplaces will be better and happier for it.

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Being Fired is not always a bad thing

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Consider the more common reasons that a person is fired:

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Personality conflict: Often getting fired is the result of the employee and the supervisor not getting along. Could be the supervisor feels threatened by a more qualified underling. Maybe there are political or religious differences that just bother the boss so much they want you out. Maybe you just don’t fit in at that particular company. So what. There are thousands of other companies where you could possible be a perfect fit.. You may be fired, but the problem may not have been you.

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Skill conflicts: It is very hard, when you interview, to know exactly what the job you seek is like. You’re assumptions about a job may turn out to be wrong. You may be asked to do stuff that you had not expected, and there may be aspects of the job that are just not strong areas for you. Big deal. Again there are millions of other jobs.

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Values conflicts: I say good for you. If that’s why you got fired, be proud. For many years I worked as a Child abuse case manager. It was ugly work that called on me to cope with difficult people and critical situations. Later I took a job investigating customer accidents. While both jobs involved dealing with people who were under stress and sometime they were extremely difficult to deal with, I found that I loved Child Protective Services and hated Risk Management, because in Risk Management I felt the goal was to not help injured customers, or provide the least amount of help you could get away with. From a business point of view minimizing the company’s culpability makes perfect sense, but my value system was torqued almost to the breaking point. I wasn’t fired from that job, but probably would have if I hadn’t seen that the value conflicts were something I just could not live with, and so I resigned
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Economically forced downsizing

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Thousands of people are downsized every day. I remember once, my father worked providing advertizing services to a windmill company that was situated in Argentina. In 1982 a war broke out between England and Argentina over the Falkland Islands. That obscure little war thousands of miles from Dallas,Texas set into motion economic foreces that ended with the windmill company cutting back, downsizing, and my father was fired. He was not fired for a lack of skill. He made no mistakes. His termination had absolutely nothing to do with him. It happens.

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Illegal terminations

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Millions of people are fired for reasons that are illegal. Most of these people do not seek redress in the courts, but their firing was still illegal. People are fired for the color of their skin, because they are pregnant, or gay, or they are discovered to be a supporter of the wrong Presidential candidate. If you were fired any unreasonable reason there’s certainly no reason to be ashamed.
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Of course there are times when the employee is at fault. It may be stealing/fraud, sexual harassment, or a chronic and continuing record of poor decision making. In such cases, the firing may be the perfect opportunity to reassess your behaviors and/or choices, and you may end up spinning off in a new direction, a better direction for you.

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The Practical Fears from being Fired

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Being fired can create problems. Resigning to avoid being fired creates problems. Quitting because the job was a bad fit still has negative consequences, but you can deal constructively with many of them. Here are some methods of mitigate job loss:

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1. Keep your job skills current through continuing education, keeping any certifications you may have and keep those certifications current and renewed.

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2. Live cheaper. Keep your private expenses low, so that you’re not 100% dependent on that pay check every month. By store brand food, rent rather than buy, and choose low rent, don’t cut down on luxuries, cut luxuries out.