You're Fired!

There's a hundred ways to get fired.

One buddy of mine accidentally hit a sprinkler while moving some construction material. It happened on the day the job was completed. The boss had made a ton of profits off the job. Then he lost his ass. The elevator lobby sprinkler poured tens of thousands of gallons of water into the finished lobby, flooding out and shorting out all four elevators. I can see the faces of the white collar workers as the elevator doors opened and a tide of water rushed into their elevator. My buddy was fired. He knew that was coming.

I recently got fired.

The last time I was fired was in 1999. It was during the dot com boom which in turn fueled a commercial construction boom. The company I worked for had its biggest job, a $1,000,000 contract to build ceilings and some walls at a software company in Mountain View. I led the 11 workers on the job out on strike as a part of the Carpenters Wildcat Strike of that year. After a few days, when the strike was over, I called the owner of the company who told me that he hated to do it, but his superintendent demanded I be fired. So I was fired.

A few weeks back my employer of the last 10 years asked me to return all my company tools. Work for the upcoming year was looking worse than last year, which was the worst year I've experienced in construction. A few guys were going to be kept on and I was to be fired. Mmmm.

I asked the boss if my job performance was okay. He said he was happy with it. Well, I pushed him, what was it? "Well," he began, "quite frankly, Rob, sometimes I feel like you'd rather be spending time with your kids than be at work."

I thought about that one. Was it a trick question? In the end I agreed with him. How could I deny it? It's true. I do good work while I'm on the clock, but I would definitely prefer to not be at work and who wouldn't prefer to be with their kids?

It's a mad mad world. Capitalism.