I Keep Getting Fired, Part 2: Are You About to Get Fired Too?

Tips and tricks for reading the writing on the walls

If you haven’t read Part 1, let me fill you in: I get fired, a lot. I’m not a disastrous employee, just an average one. I’ve only been fired for actual performance reasons twice, but been abruptly let go for no cited reason several other times. Part of this is that I hate quitting companies, so I always stick around as long as I possibly can. The other part is that…well, I’m a bit weird. It’s one reason my most successful stints have been remote jobs that didn’t involve client interactions, where it’s much easier for me to cloak my weirdness in the shadows.

Obligatory plug: my book deals with all the times I’ve been fired or laid off. If you are a paid subscriber, you get the whole book and audio episodes for free, one chapter released roughly every week.

One question I got a lot after publishing Part 1 (which got way more attention than I expected!) was, “How do I know if I’m about to get fired?” Or, “What do I do if I know I’m probably getting fired soon?” Well, you’re in luck because the expert in Getting Fired is here to give you all the deets!

Signs You’re Getting Fired

If you’re anything like me, you’ve had a lot of moments where you’ve worried about getting fired, but it doesn’t actually happen. This means that when you actually are in danger of getting fired, it’s really easy to tell yourself that you’re just imagining it.

At one company, during orientation I broke my work computer with a game of Sims (I was playing outside of work hours on a work device.) I was convinced it was over for me, and sheepishly showed up to IT ready to confess the sin of starting a Sims dynasty who were going to own a family farm over the generations. As it turned out, the computer crashed for reasons unrelated to Sims, but IT laughed and said I wouldn’t get fired for that anyway. But every mishap after that point led me to think I was going to get fired. It got so annoying that my boss actually had a meeting with HR to discuss how my fear of being fired was paradoxically impacting my ability to do my work. Of course, the fact that she met with HR did not feel reassuring. Blame the OCD, but every month or so, a new thing happened that I was convinced would be my end. And ultimately, I did get fired! Just not for any of those things. Or at least not explicitly- it’s possible all those other things, even if they were inconsequential, created the perception of me that I was overly anxious and incompetent.

If you’re like me, and have had lots of false alarm firings, then it can be hard to get a straight interpretation of your situation from anyone you ask. Most likely, your family and friends will roll their eyes and say, “Weren’t you worried about this last month too?” But having anxiety doesn’t preclude you from ever being fired for real—in my case, it often contributed.

Having been fired several times I can think of several surefire signs that distinguish the real firings from the delusions: