THE VULNERABILITY OF BEING AN EMPLOYEE and why I’ll never do it again

I was fired in December 2021. Boom. Pow! Just like that. One hour I’m drafting a document to be sent to customers and the next hour, I’m out.

Without a job. Without benefits. Without a second income in our home.

I'm lucky because I’m in a two-income home so while shocked, I also had my husband’s income as a parachute. I saw our stability and savings accounts as a life raft. I realized our prepaid car insurance was a beam of light. Viva la two-income relationships!

Shock and Awe

So I closed every work file on my computer and attempted to log out of my work email. While trying, I was KICKED OUT. Yeah… talk about pouring salt into a wound. My being fired had been discussed and other people knew about it.

Plans had been created for this. How rude is that?

But was it rude or impersonal? Yep, the latter. I just learned the lesson that business isn’t personal.

I closed my laptop and walked out of my home office. Told my husband I was going for a walk around the building. It was 2:00 p.m. EST on a Tuesday.

I will never forget this day because it was two days before New Years’ Eve and one day before I went on vacation for ten days.

Wowza.

I was fired a day before my vacation.

I was mad. I was shocked. I was irritated at the lack of control.

I was mentally wrecked. I was embarrassed about my career prospects.

But I needed to capture this. I channeled everything I'd learned in therapy and jotted down a list of what I was feeling. I didn't even write a paragraph; just a raw, uncensored list of emotions about the shock, relief, frustration, and loss of routine that I was experiencing.

I didn’t have to read these work emails anymore.

Wait, I didn’t have to read anything about this work topic.

Oh no. I didn’t have anything to do.

Why Working is Important to Me

I’ve been working since I was 15 years old. I was a grocery bagger and I’d smile and chat with customers while bagging their pretzels and sodas in the neighborhood Kroger store. I carried that same sense of fulfillment with me when I worked in retail and folded graphic t-shirts with boards to ensure the designs were perfectly visible.

I continued to be fulfilled with employment as I delayed attending law school for five years because I wanted to spend a few years in Corporate America.

Working was fulfilling because it allowed me to solve problems, untangle messes, and find logic in seemingly senseless situations. I enjoyed doing these things and sought out jobs where I could make magic from confusion.

And I couldn't do any of that anymore. At least not with that company.

No… not with ANY COMPANY because I was unemployed.

How I Handled Shock

So what did I do? I had therapy that night and stared at the ceiling for a few hours. Then drank a glass of water and stared at the wall for a while. I went through the motions of getting my daughter ready for bed. I probably ate food. I don’t remember eating, but I remember double-checking our luggage and traveling to Florida the next morning.

I didn’t stress about being unemployed while on vacation. I couldn’t. I was flying with a toddler for the first time; trying to adjust to the pace and humidity of Florida while my husband and I pointed out palm trees and motorcycles to our daughter. I was forced to be present during the trip because my kiddo was seeing the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. This was momentous.

But as soon as we returned home, the reality of being unemployed shocked me all over again.

Surprising Truths about Unemployment

Working makes people feel many things: pride, satisfaction, community, and even frustration. I’ve had calls with many supervisors and felt that tight knot in the pit of your stomach and think, ‘Uh oh, I’m toast’ but you realize the drama was in your head. Well, that happened during this call too. My supervisor mentioned something frustrating 😬, brought up a new subject 😏, then mentioned how all of it led to be being terminated 😵. Sneaky sense of security.

Those immediate feelings made sense. But I continued to feel many emotions for the next six weeks. Randomly bursting into tears. Unable to sleep. Taking too many naps during the day and eating too much takeout at night. Existing in a zombie status.

What triggered these feelings? Everything. Realizing that no one was waiting for me to join a meeting. The silence of my phone because coworkers weren’t contacting me. When I filed an unemployment claim and had to recount why I was unemployed, how it happened, and whether I was mentally and physically capable of working full time. Em-barass-ing!

Why had the shock of being unemployed stung so much when I was home from vacation?

A couple of reasons:

I have worked from home, alongside my husband and our toddler for the last two years. We take turns chasing the baby around while the other leads a meeting and we have lunch together. We charge our laptops at night to prepare for the next day. WE HAD A ROUTINE.

But not me. Not anymore. Now, I was an outsider. The one who was not contributing. The person who doesn’t have a job. I’m in my 30’s so how can I just NOT have a job? How Sway?

So I began to read anything I could get my hands on about imposter syndrome, wondering if that was affecting me. Turns out, imposter syndrome is what I typically felt when a boss would call but turned out to be nothing. Imposter syndrome was not what I was feeling.

So I researched and read other things, but I stumbled across an article about grief. Could I grieve for a lost job? Was it appropriate to grieve a job?

Yes, grief is appropriate and often a normal process of losing a job.

WOW!

In an article for Headspace, psychotherapist, and author Tina B. Tessina, Ph.D. said, “Most people don’t realize how important routine can be in our lives… Losing a job, especially involuntarily, is a big loss that needs to be grieved.”

Well, amen to that. I needed a title for this dark cloud and the weight on my shoulders. What I was feeling matched the five stages of grief:

1. Denial

2. Anger

3. Bargaining

4. Depression

5. Acceptance

Grief explained the spontaneous tears, paralyzing sadness, and rage because I was dismissed from a job without giving my opinion about it. But placing a title on the process didn’t make being unemployed feel better. Nope, it still sucked because underneath it all, I felt exposed. I was vulnerable because I had been vulnerable.

Being fired showed me how vulnerable it is to work for anyone else.

If I have been working since I was 15, I’ve been in a vulnerable position since 15. I could’ve been fired while I loaded a can of beans into a paper bag. Could’ve been excluded from any internship or other job.

I had been trading my time for an employer’s money for as long as they wanted me around, and I agreed to that?

Oh no.

Being an employee no longer felt mutually beneficial. It felt one-sided because when I left any job, voluntarily or involuntarily, the company didn’t cease to exist. I am replaceable. Dang.

I realized I was a cog in the wheel and I would have to do this for the rest of my life.

No thank you. Stop the bus, I want to get off.

Unemployment and Relationships

Earlier, I mentioned that being married brought some financial perks, but it now felt like a rock dropping to the floor. I couldn’t be unemployed because another person who agreed to walk through life with me and we created a young person and I just changed the plan. *whispers* Sorry.

My husband often tells me that my contributions to our life exceed the money I was contributing and I believe him, but I still didn’t feel better.

If working remotely for almost two years taught me anything, it’s that we can create lives we never thought would exist. So I choose to never give someone the power to dictate the money I earn. Never put me in a vulnerable position that could be eliminated with the snap of someone's fingers.

I had to learn to enjoy working and not find fulfillment in working. Enjoyment is the state or process of taking pleasure in something. Fulfillment is the achievement of something desired, or predicted. Those are BIG differences. I enjoy problem-solving and creating order from mess, but it’s not my crowning achievement.

With this reality, I looked at our family budget and saw how much wiggle room we had and what expenses we could remove while we have one income.

I realized that I was either arrogant or sheltered to have never been fired and shocked and dismissed from a job before.

And I considered what will it take for me to actively enter into another unwritten agreement that you will pay me for the time I give up to work on your tasks?

I am still looking for the answer to this question.

Every day, I remind myself that business decisions aren’t personal. I continue to apply for unemployment with hopes that it’ll be approved one day. I continue to apply for jobs; some three months after being fired and I wait for the next curveball.

No Silver Lining to Unemployment

I went through the five stages of grief after I lost my job, but being unemployed showed me that being an employee was being in a vulnerable position. The employer calls the shots, you hope they acknowledge your vacation days and 401k contributions and health benefits, but if they don’t then what? You could sue if you had the time and resources to do that, or you could start a union to create fairer conditions for others.

Being unemployed is showing me that equating employment with stability is bad. Being skeptical of every new office is bad. And I still have a lot to learn.

Also, what could I create that would allow me to set my own terms and feel like a working relationship is mutually beneficial?

How much do I think my brain is worth? What is my time worth?

The journey may be terrifying, but I’m ready to make decisions from the driver's seat of my life. The view is better from the front of the bus, anyway.

Keep running towards words.

NOTE: This blog was initially posted in 2021, and in 2023, I went back to work as a full-time employee to stretch my money while I was scaling my business. I moved this to draft because the vulnerability of publishing my words was too much for me. Ironically, in 2021, I was in the second year of my podcast and I was probably so overwhelmed with the newness of that that I couldn't imagine writing blogs and podcasting. To publish this blog again, I think it is really cool because I am doing all the things right now and I've come back, full circle, with posting two blogs a week for more than a year. Look at how life works out. It's kinda cool to see how my writing has changed over the years.

Kyla