Getting Fired to get Fired Up.

Getting Fired to get Fired Up.

July 15, 2005

Today I got a call from one of our stockholders who had
just been fired from his job. He was fired when he came
back from his break and definitely did not expect it. He
had just called me during his break to say hello and to
talk more about how he might be able to sell his company a
Website Pro sitebuilder as they badly needed a website.
Things were not going well for the company and it seemed to
him that a website might help them get more business.

I remember when he started working there and how they had
convinced him to leave his previous job with various
promises. He made the change because he needed the raise
and because he was stuck in a dead end job where he was.
They pursued him for several months and finally he made the
move. Within days he found that the job was not as they
had described and the family-owned business was a place of
stress and turmoil. He began to dread working there but
decided to stay until his UPC business was producing enough
income to enable him to leave. It got increasingly
difficult as he often got instructions from several of the
family members and often these were in direct conflict. He
soon came to the realization of why the previous person on
his position had left without even giving notice.

Determined to stick it out, he made a concerted effort to
meet the demands of the job, but it was emotionally
challenging to be given an assignment only to have another
family member pull that one and replace it with another
project. He was openly criticized for not getting enough
done and never getting it done fast enough. The promised
raise never happened.

So today he was fired. As is typical today in many
companies, he was not given a clear reason for the
dismissal. They couldn’t work with him anymore was the
reason given. His comment to me was that the company, like
all the others, is always right and never is willing to
listen to the truth.

The sad truth is that many employers are like this today,
interested in only what they can “get out” of an employee
as opposed to seeing the person as a valuable and gifted
resource. The value of the person to the company is
limited to the job the company needs to have performed.
The value of the human capital, the talents and experiences
the individual possesses are no longer relevant. For
example, in most companies today, there is little interest
in retaining an employee whose job has been eliminated,
even when the employee may be very talented and
experienced. This short term thinking results in a lack of
loyalty and creates unnecessary turnover which ultimately
leads to higher costs.

The danger to the employee in all this goes beyond the loss
of income. Frequently, when the job disappears, or when
the value of the employee is solely determined by their
performance, the employee begins to feel worthless. When
they begin to accept the lie that their worth is determined
by someone else and not by the gifts of their creator, it
becomes increasingly difficult to perform at a high level.
A downward spiral may develop.

When I got the phone call, I was almost moved to tears.
Whenever I hear of someone getting fired, I remember that
Friday afternoon when it happened to me. My job was
eliminated and my world was turned completely upside down
in a matter of seconds. I will never forget the pain of
rejection, the attitude that I was dispensable and
expendable. I was openly told that I wasn’t worth saving
in spite of the fact that there were over 55,000 positions
in that company and I had been a top performer. I became
an entrepreneur that moment! Never again would I let
someone else put me in that position. Praise God. That was
over 25 years ago!

With regard to my stockholder friend, I can only hope and
pray that this degrading experience shook him up to the
point of really getting motivated to protect himself. Is
he fed up enough to get fired up? He is committed, but I
hope through getting fired, the humiliation was enough to
get him really fired up to build the biggest UPC network in
the entire company, rescuing millions from that same fate
he experienced this morning.

So I guess I have a different question for you. Are you
going to wait until it happens to you too or can you get
fed up and fired up BEFORE you get fired?

Author: Bob Cline – Bob serves as the elected President of
UPC and has had the privilege of assisting thousands on
their path to financial freedom in UPC. Bob resides in
West Linn, OR with his wife Vona. www.yourupc.com
bob@yourupc.com