WEBVTT NOTE 15. How to Handle Getting Fired 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.000 Chapter 15. How to Handle Getting Fired. July 30, 2007. 2 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:15.000 Wired magazine this month offered a few pointers on how to disguise on your resume the fact that you have been fired. 3 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:21.000 The main point is to come up with a negotiated settlement that has you resigning from your job. 4 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:25.000 Many employers will go along with these because they fear litigation. 5 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:30.560 Education. There will be no wrongful termination lawsuits if you are on the record as having 6 00:00:30.560 --> 00:00:36.400 left voluntarily. I don't dispute this advice. It seems fine 7 00:00:36.400 --> 00:00:41.240 enough. But it doesn't deal with the much more important matter of how to handle being 8 00:00:41.240 --> 00:00:47.260 fired from a psychological and sociological point of view. The truth is that getting fired 9 00:00:47.260 --> 00:00:52.720 is one of the best things that can ever happen to you if you look at it in the right way. 10 00:00:52.720 --> 00:00:55.860 There is no reason to consider it the end of the world. 11 00:00:55.860 --> 00:00:59.720 It can be the beginning of great things. 12 00:00:59.720 --> 00:01:04.760 The key to understanding this is to zoom in on the nature of a labor contract. 13 00:01:04.760 --> 00:01:09.640 It is an agreement based on the expectation of mutual cooperation that betters the lot 14 00:01:09.640 --> 00:01:12.940 of both the employer and the employee. 15 00:01:12.940 --> 00:01:17.680 In a world without scarcity, the employer would rather do all work alone and not have 16 00:01:17.680 --> 00:01:19.660 to hire anyone. 17 00:01:19.660 --> 00:01:24.860 This would save in resources, and in any case, most employers figure that they can do a better 18 00:01:24.860 --> 00:01:30.180 job than anyone that they can hire, and often they are right. 19 00:01:30.180 --> 00:01:35.380 The very existence of institutions that are larger than sole proprietorships grows out 20 00:01:35.380 --> 00:01:38.220 of the need to divide the labor. 21 00:01:38.220 --> 00:01:42.740 Even if the employer is the best sweeper, web developer, accountant and marketing expert 22 00:01:42.740 --> 00:01:49.620 in the world, it is to his advantage to specialize in one area while farming out the other tasks. 23 00:01:49.620 --> 00:01:53.620 Even if these tasks will not be done as well by others. 24 00:01:53.620 --> 00:01:59.620 Every employer, then, regards the hiring decision with a combination of dread. 25 00:01:59.620 --> 00:02:05.620 No one wants to waste money. And relief. Finally, I can get something done around here. 26 00:02:05.620 --> 00:02:12.620 It is critically important for the employee to understand that he is doing no favors to the employer by working there. 27 00:02:12.620 --> 00:02:17.020 nor is the employer to be regarded as a generous distributor of funds, 28 00:02:17.020 --> 00:02:21.500 much less someone who is under some positive moral obligation to dish out. 29 00:02:22.700 --> 00:02:28.860 The employee is there because the nature of the world and the ubiquity of the scarcity of time and 30 00:02:28.860 --> 00:02:34.060 resources make it necessary. In order for there to be peace amidst its arrangement, 31 00:02:34.060 --> 00:02:40.460 there must be mutual benefit, always. When the mutual benefit ceases to exist, 32 00:02:40.460 --> 00:02:56.460 It is in the interest of both parties to dissolve the relationship. The employee can leave for greener pastures. In the same way, the boss can stop paying the employee in exchange for services that he no longer believes are a benefit to the company. 33 00:02:56.460 --> 00:03:03.460 To be fired only means that the employer takes the initiative in ceasing to fund further engagement. 34 00:03:03.460 --> 00:03:09.880 Both or either side of this exchange could be wrong, of course, but all human decision-making 35 00:03:09.880 --> 00:03:14.780 is speculative, and we can only act on the information we have. 36 00:03:14.780 --> 00:03:19.900 Why would anyone want to hang around at a dinner party at which he is not wanted? 37 00:03:19.900 --> 00:03:23.060 It's the same way with a labor contract. 38 00:03:23.060 --> 00:03:28.680 If you aren't wanted, you should walk away and consider yourself better off as a result. 39 00:03:28.680 --> 00:03:35.400 No lawsuits, no complaints, no bitterness, no acts of vengeance. Just a clean and happy 40 00:03:35.400 --> 00:03:42.620 break. Doesn't the reason you are fired matter? Not really. The employer doesn't always know 41 00:03:42.620 --> 00:03:47.880 the reason. He just knows that it is not working out from his point of view and he is perfectly 42 00:03:47.880 --> 00:03:51.720 within his rights to terminate the prior agreement. 43 00:03:51.720 --> 00:03:57.180 Let me tell a quick story from my own work history. When I was in clothing sales, I was 44 00:03:57.180 --> 00:04:03.180 I was one of the top-ranked salesmen on the floor, but I didn't always see eye to eye with the owner-boss. 45 00:04:03.180 --> 00:04:11.180 One Christmas season, he told all the salespeople that all alterations had to be promised out three weeks from the date they were sold. 46 00:04:11.180 --> 00:04:14.180 That struck me as outrageous. 47 00:04:14.180 --> 00:04:25.180 Sure enough, within the next hour, I had a customer come in and buy seven pricey suits on condition that all alterations were to be done within the week. 48 00:04:25.180 --> 00:04:30.900 Now, I should have gone to the boss and asked him. He would have said no, I'm quite sure. 49 00:04:30.900 --> 00:04:35.100 So I didn't. I went ahead and promised the suits out. 50 00:04:35.100 --> 00:04:39.480 At closing time, the boss found the tickets and threw all seven suits at me and demanded 51 00:04:39.480 --> 00:04:45.700 to know who was going to alter these. I said, I will, and I promptly hit the sewing machines 52 00:04:45.700 --> 00:04:51.220 and began to sew. I had them all finished by nine p.m. that evening. I brought them 53 00:04:51.220 --> 00:04:56.260 came into him and said that I would deliver them to the customer personally in the morning. 54 00:04:56.260 --> 00:05:03.480 My boss said, That's great, and added, After that, I won't need your services any more. 55 00:05:03.480 --> 00:05:10.420 Was he wrong or right? He was wrong that firing me was good for his business. But he was right 56 00:05:10.420 --> 00:05:16.100 that he could not countenance an insubordinate employee. And just as a tip to the worker, 57 00:05:16.100 --> 00:05:22.240 There is no surer way to make yourself unwelcome than to be insubordinate. Even from a business 58 00:05:22.240 --> 00:05:28.020 point of view, he needed a staff that would follow his orders, right or wrong. Hey, it's 59 00:05:28.020 --> 00:05:34.300 not my style, but it was his clothing store, for goodness sake. I ended up as a manager 60 00:05:34.300 --> 00:05:41.220 in another store, and we outcompeted his store into every season that followed. Being fired 61 00:05:41.220 --> 00:05:44.940 It does not mean that your time with the company was a waste. 62 00:05:44.940 --> 00:05:50.340 In the time you were there, both you and your boss benefited in some way. 63 00:05:50.340 --> 00:05:54.080 Because conditions change doesn't negate that reality. 64 00:05:54.080 --> 00:05:58.380 The boss gained a worker, and you gained valuable experience. 65 00:05:58.380 --> 00:06:03.900 And one of the most valuable experiences is the shock of being fired. 66 00:06:03.900 --> 00:06:07.440 Sometimes it is the best way to get a person's attention. 67 00:06:07.440 --> 00:06:12.480 We all need improvement, and experiencing outright rejection provides a poignant reminder of 68 00:06:12.480 --> 00:06:16.400 this fact, and an impetus to change. 69 00:06:16.400 --> 00:06:19.480 You might feel anger and even hatred. 70 00:06:19.480 --> 00:06:22.200 You might want to curse out your boss. 71 00:06:22.200 --> 00:06:27.480 You might plan a lawsuit, which seems to be everyone's first reaction. 72 00:06:27.480 --> 00:06:33.120 Instead, you need to do something completely counterintuitive. 73 00:06:33.120 --> 00:06:37.260 You need to thank your boss for having had confidence in you and for giving you the 74 00:06:37.260 --> 00:06:43.460 the opportunity to work there. You need to say this as sincerely as you can. And when 75 00:06:43.460 --> 00:06:48.620 you see your boss at the grocery store or a sports event in the future, you should bound 76 00:06:48.620 --> 00:06:53.220 up to him as if he were an old friend and thank him again. 77 00:06:53.220 --> 00:06:58.560 If you do this, there might come a time in the future, in fact, there certainly will, 78 00:06:58.560 --> 00:07:04.020 when this person will be in a position to recommend you for a job. He is far more likely 79 00:07:04.020 --> 00:07:09.540 to do so. In fact, he might be so impressed by your magnanimity that he will offer you 80 00:07:09.540 --> 00:07:16.180 your job back. You can politely turn him down, if you so wish. The point here is that there 81 00:07:16.180 --> 00:07:21.260 is nothing productive about resentment or hate, any more than you should hate the convenience 82 00:07:21.260 --> 00:07:26.820 store from which you no longer buy milk. You once benefited from exchange and you no longer 83 00:07:26.820 --> 00:07:33.700 perceive the advantage in doing so. Big deal. If it makes it any easier, let us remember 84 00:07:33.700 --> 00:07:35.700 The Theory of Money and Credit 85 00:08:03.700 --> 00:08:29.700 The worst fate to befall the American labor market came after World War II when employees began to think of all jobs as lifetime jobs, the way they are in economically backward and decaying Europe today. 86 00:08:29.700 --> 00:08:43.700 In a free market, we would hop from job to job without any problem. Employers would freely hire and fire, trying people out the way we try on shoes, and employees would be the same way. 87 00:08:43.700 --> 00:08:53.700 In this way, we are more likely to find the right fit, and our places of work would become less contentious, places of happiness and peace. 88 00:08:53.700 --> 00:08:58.700 Nothing is more absurd than the attempt to restrict the right to fire. 89 00:08:58.700 --> 00:09:01.700 Volunteerism goes both ways. 90 00:09:01.700 --> 00:09:04.700 The employee can leave and the employer can fire. 91 00:09:04.700 --> 00:09:08.700 Any other system, such as one that would restrict either action, 92 00:09:08.700 --> 00:09:13.700 is an act of coercion that diminishes the well-being of both sides. 93 00:09:13.700 --> 00:09:17.700 Thinking of our kids here and their job experiences, 94 00:09:17.700 --> 00:09:20.700 we should hope that they get fired from at least one job 95 00:09:20.700 --> 00:09:30.500 Being fired reminds us of our obligation, the contractual nature of work, and the need 96 00:09:30.500 --> 00:09:34.940 for agreement and voluntarism in all social relations. 97 00:09:34.940 --> 00:09:40.620 The act of getting fired underscores the existence of the freedom of association, which is the 98 00:09:40.620 --> 00:09:45.720 key to social peace and a foundation of a growing economy. 99 00:09:45.720 --> 00:09:47.720 Do your part and take it well.