Anybody ever been fired?

[trik396]

I was fired from a 14 year job for carrying a handgun in my work vehicle. Of course if you know where I live, you know what I'm up against... bastards in this communist stronghold.

[Lazy R]

I think everyone should be fired at least once or twice in life. I've been fired a couple times because I was young and a bad employee. I've been fired twice for obeying union rules and bucking against a job supt and was a good employee in construction.

As a self employed person, I've had to fire employees. Being fired was much easier than firing.

[lance22]

I was a preacher for 12 years. My last stint was in a small town deep in the interior of South Florida. I was fired there for reasons that I never understood. How it affected me: I decided that I was all done working with people. People are hard to work with. So, I switched to computers.

I was fired from one computer job a few years later ... it was really low pay so I screwed around a lot. How it affected me: I laughed in their faces, and was hired by a better company and doubled my salary.

A couple gigs after that I worked in a very high-stress environment where I wrote programs that allowed banks to communicate with other banks, and I wrote software that managed these processes. I made the mistake once (while there) of designing the application around the data on the dev servers. When it launched it blew up and cost that company a boatload of money. LOL it worked great when it was running off of the DEV databases ... oh well. I re-wrote it and it was successful but that failure tainted my review so that I quit that job in anger after my yearly review. How it affected me: It took two hours to find my next gig, at 19 k more per year. LOL.

If you are worried about employment get into computers, it's a great way to pay the bills. As far as working with people goes - if you work with people you are going to lose because people are people. And that's what I love about computers - if a computer fouls up it does so without malice or ill will. With people - there is no problem that can be fixed. With computers, every problem can be fixed.

[newKid]

I got fired once when I was 17 or 18. . . I think the boss was pissed off or somethin. Im not really sure. I hadn't done anything wrong, but I couldnt work completely full time because I was in college at the time. But this boss had some killer mood swings.

anyway. I was hired back 2 weeks later when they realized they needed me. I did all of the UPS shipping there, and no one knew how to work the UPS software as well as me.

[tdyoung58]

only once, but honestly I didn't hit him that hard.

[So Flo]

I was fired from a cooks job the summer before I went into the Army...just turned 18 years old, was a couple months from going in and didn't always come to work...or come to work sober...so I was cool with it.

I've now been with the company I work for now for 21 years!

[retired]

Never been fired, tho I quit a couple of nothing jobs because the mgrs. were idiots. I returned when they left or in one case, died.

[thejoe]

I know I said I'd wait until next week, but here are the details. Hopefully those that have chimed in can read this and give me some more input.

I work in a retirment community. I've been with this company 5 years (since before I finished college)--I started out as a personal caregiver. I had 1 job for 1.5 years previous to this which I quit because the president was unintelligent. Anyway, all that to say that this has been, pretty much, my main job for my entire professional career (short, yes).

The situation:
A year ago I took this promotion with no real job discription. I'm a Wellness Director (supposedly primarily restorative physical exercise for elderly people) and nobody else in my building knows what that means and few people in higher management have any idea. I had a notion of what the job would entail (I'd been going through "Wellness Director Training") and then when I actually started doing the job I thought I was supposed to do my boss told me I'm supposed to primarily do Activities (entertainment, arts/crafts, outings, games, etc.). I hated this idea, but needed the money, so I said I'd try to do my best at the job.

Fastforward to 9 months later. I had done a decent job planning activities, keeping everyone entertained and at the same time managed to improve overall physical ability in our residents by about 30%--people were happy for a while.

Last week I got called into the bosses office (her boss was there, too) and was given a list of things I haven't been doing. Primarily, I haven't been maintaining the building cleanliness as I should have (not cleaning up after activities sufficiently) and I haven't been increasing the programs for the overall building on a schedule the management felt was acceptible (this was the first I'd heard of the problem). Also, I got in trouble for using my work computer for "surfing the internet." I was given a week to fix it all.

I can admit that I haven't done everything in my power to keep our building top notch. I also know I have used the computer for things like XD Talk (my bad, truly). I also admit that I haven't been working on new programs. I submitted a job performance improvement plan and have been working 11 hour days at work and several more at home trying to fix it all.

In my defense, I have never worked fewer than 40 hours a week, will NEVER get overtime if I go over (company policy). I have worked extra hours because sometimes evening events are necessary for a well rounded Wellness program and I've never had any complaints about it. All the "free time" (meaning program planning time) that I scheduled into the day has been occupied by serving meals for the past 4 weeks. I have been volunteering in the evenings with a local high school (I'm an Athletic Trainer) and haven't been able to stay in the evenings recently. Also, I work a weekend job because my job doesn't pay enough for me to make ends meet (I'm the breadwinner for my wife and daughter).

It's a messed up situation that I did bring on myself. I haven't told my managers about the extra work I've been doing because I feel that would be excuse-making and I try not to do that.

At any rate, I'm doing my best to fix my mistakes. Sorry for the long post. Thanks for listening.

joe

[yocan]

Get a co-worker to give your boss a link to this thread.

I've never been fired, but I was passed up in a seasonal job for a coaching position (upgrade from lifegaurd) considering I wanted to swim in college coaching experience would have helped me get a job in college. Also I was next in line. On top of that I was a 2 time all-american, 12 time medal winner in the HS conference, and posessor of five city records (And had swim coaching experience from one summer before)

That made me mad.

July 4th party they left no one to supervise the inflatables (obstacle course and moonwalk) I was at the obstacle course starting the kids with enough room so they wouldn't fall on eachother, and lo and behold a parent is yelling at me, the moonwalk was rolled onto the entryway, which means a 100+ lb motor is in the air 15 feet or more over a bunch of kids head only held on by the nylon strip that held the engiine to the air pipe. I went over there, no one died. I wasn't relieved for 2 hours 50 minutes. I was yelled at for being gone so long (30 yards from the pool, they had 14 lifegaurds, never need more than 3 at a time) I never left the children, it would have been wrong.

I quit the next morning. They weren't safe enough. Though in truth I don't think they would have rehired me the next summer after that.

Haven't held a typical job since. USMC!

[03RangerXLT]

was fired, for failing a test, when I was 23. was working for a payroll acounting company, went to two weeks of training in ny and had to pass a test to continue on. the power went out on the whole damn coast, and i was trying to study with a damn flashlight and a solar flashlight. i mean, i even tried cooking hot pockets on the exhaust manifold of my rental car! so i made a bad choice and decided to join some of my classmates for a couple beers provided by the extended stay hotel. i failed the test by 2 percentage points and was fired.

in the end, it really was my fault for not passing the test, but i was devestated at being fired. i felt like a failure and worthless. i have worked a lot of jobs in my young life 9now 28 yrs old). but i have always been told i have a place to come back to at all of those jobs. when i interviewed for my current job as a deputy sheriff, they asked if i had ever been fired from anything. i told the truth in a frank manner without sugar coating it, and i think that helped me. on the bad side, i have this horrible fear of doing something wrong that will get me fired. it almost hampers me from doing my job because i am afraid of messing up. my boss says i need to loosen up and have fun. we'll see.