The 5 P’s of Getting Fired

Principle

This is one of those obvious no-no’s that get you the pink slip. Maybe you embezzled money, leaked company secrets or violated internet policy by inundating your company’s server with bad porn (eh, is there such a thing as good porn? Oh, I digress…).

When you recklessly violate company policy, rules or other professional mores, you can count on getting that “emergency” meeting at 2 pm on a Tuesday and finding yourself without a job.

Unfortunately, when things like that happen – serious emotional issues are at play (and more than likely, self-sabotage). Sometimes, even the seemingly “harmless” things can set an employer to fire you (like blogging about your job or dating a co-worker) – but that’s a risk we take when we decide to blur the lines between the personal and the professional.

Usually, in those cases, you do deserve to be out of work, at least for a while.

Perception

Keeping a job is just as much about image control as it is about implementing skill.

It doesn’t matter if you are the most talented, hardest worker in the department, if no one knows about it – you are just another bee in the hive.  I hate using this cliche, but the “perception is reality” thing seems to be the rampant mantra amongst managers and execs.

Once, I worked with a guy named “Ben” who supported a group of directors in my department. I never really knew what Ben did for them because his group was always approaching me and the other support staff for help. They’d preface their requests by saying,”Ben is so busy, I don’t want to bother him - do you think you can help me?”

Are you kidding?

But yes, it’s true. Since Ben could talk louder than anyone on the phone, disappear for mysterious amounts of time and shuffle bunches of paper at his desk – his team thought he was even too busy to support them.

In reality, Ben was a desk slob who spent copious amounts of time away from his desk in favor of hanging out with pals from other departments. Depending on whom you ask – Ben was really busy.

But smoke and mirrors aside, perception is probably the least of your worries since people who are really and truly engaged in their work  – actually appear to be so.

Personality, Politics & Performance

There are highly capable and talented people floating all over the Earth, but their personalities suck and they are in constant professional turmoil (whether or not they have a job).

As I’m sure you already know, perfectly nice, well-mannered, sociable, happy and likeable people keep their jobs – jerks and jackasses do not.

Jerks and jackasses, however, that do succesfully navigate office politics do maintain their jobs.

Therefore…

So, what does that mean for someone like you? You got the boot. Ask yourself this: did you really like working there in the first place? Was it offering you the growth you needed to pursue the next step?

If it did or you actually liked the job – I’m truly sorry. That’s terrible, but please remember that the Career Gods didn’t stop creating jobs when they made that one.

Keep your chin up.

But, if you didn’t like the job and people got on your nerves – please get off your very high horse and grow up.

And, if they didn’t like you or you didn’t like the work – so what?  Bad jobs are a dime a dozen – and getting canned from one doesn’t make you a soulless cretin or a professionally incompetent lout. Or, maybe you are one of those things, but I’m sure you are taking steps to work on that

Assuming that you know what it takes to keep a job, getting fired doesn’t mean that you can’t still think of yourself as the multi-faceted, interesting and fabulous person you always were – you just happened to work some place where the people didn’t agree.

Move on and take this experience as one of life’s hard to swallow, bitter pills. It’s ill-advised to remain pissed off at what amounts to a blip on your professional radar screen.

Remember that when you land the next (wonderfully better and professionally fulfilling) job.