The Second Time I Was Fired
Dysfunctional workplace doesn't even account for it.
Hello again! I have moved into the next round of searching for an agent. It’s clear that my query letter needs work. I’ve finally received responses from several people and see some changes that need to be made.
Using The Waste Land as the structure for my work is still solid. That, combined with how closely my actual life - and the drought - aligns with the metaphorical implications of The Waste Land should carry the work. I’ve started the search for the next 10 agents and intend to seek help with my query letter.
Unti then, here’s another look into some of the prime dysfunction in my life, the second time I was fired from a job.
When my then-wife and I moved from Kansas to California, she landed a job at UC San Diego in the Sociology department. I found a job across campus as a webmaster for a science lab. By that time, I had 10 years under my belt as a webmaster and solid skills. I was hired to redesign the websites to be public facing and easy to manage and update. I also had the responsibility for producing newsletters and fact sheets and got roped into compiling and filing renewal grants and preparing large amounts of materials for neuroscience conferences.
I agreed to a salary that just under 50,000 in 2005. That was comparably less than what I was making in Kansas by about $6,000, but they said raises would quickly make up the difference. It was more money than I had ever made up to that point, so I didn’t quibble too much, though I asked for $2,000 more when negotiating and got it.
In Kansas, raises at the university were based on whether or not the legislature gave higher education money for raises. In California, that wasn’t the case. So I was shocked when I didn’t receive a raise after my first year. By the third year, I was used to not receiving a raise. In the 4th year, I finally got a 3% raise, but come on, in Southern California, that’s less than 1% per year.
Six months in, I started looking for another job. My partner’s desk was a bottleneck that prevented us from getting our work done. I also learned that the reputation of the lab where I worked was looked at skeptically, so transferring to another department on campus wasn’t easy at all. There were rumors that our bosses gave bad reviews of our work when people called to verify our employment history.
One night, my work partner, Skip, and I got called into see our boss at the end of the work day. Skip had put together a detailed bibliography of publications. But he had not organized it. It wasn’t alphabetical and it wasn’t in date order. The boss chewed him out. It became clear, an hour into the chewing out, that this didn’t have anything to do with me. I asked to leave. My boss kept Skip there until 8:30 at night chewing him out. It was clear that Skip was an obstacle to getting the work done. Skip was put on 6-month probation, and they helped him train for another job and transfer out, leaving me as the only one in the communications team department to clean up the mess.
Once my partner left, and the work magically started getting done, my bosses recognized that I was actually doing the work, and I got a 3% raise. And then they finally gave me some help in the form of student workers.
For two years, we studied similar websites to the one we were building and developed a plan to complete it. We designed, we reformatted, we collected and collated collateral. We tested and tested on a development server. We produced a dynamic, beautiful, appealing website that was clean, functional, and aesthetically pleasing.
One day, I got a call from our funding agency, NIH, in Washington, D.C.
“Hey, we’ve been trying to reach your directors for a week but have been unable to reach them,” David said.
“I can put you through to them,” I said, thinking he had dialed the wrong number.
“Actually, I called to speak with you. We saw the new website. It’s fantastic.”
“Thank you for saying so. I’m pleased with how it came out.”
“In fact, my bosses like it so much, they would like to use some of the imagery for our own PR collateral.”
“That’s great! I can ask my boss if that’s okay, as long as there aren’t any permissions issues with the images.”
“Great! Looking forward to it.”
I brought this good news to the attention of my bosses. I’ve written this scene in many ways, long and short. Here’s how it appears in the final draft of my memoir right now.
In June, one of my bosses rapped his knuckles on my desk. “Your position is no longer secure.”
The recession had depleted our office, but this added insult to injury. Six months earlier, a representative from NIH, our funding agency, called, complementing me on our redesigned website, a two-year effort. He asked for permission to use our imagery in their promotional materials. That marked a huge success for me and my team.
When I told the principal investigator about it, he said, “You spoke to NIH?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t EVER take a call from NIH again. You’ll undo all of our efforts with the funding office.”
“How was I to know it was them? They called me. I merely answered my phone.”
“Don’t talk to them. I mean it.” He turned his back on me and continued a competing conversation.
My job was to raise public awareness of our work, and here I had attracted positive attention for our lab. Five years with low pay, no raises, and successful completion of the job for which I was hired, I thought I had secured enough capital for a raise and promotion, not for a scolding and dismissal. For the next six months, my bosses treated me as if I wasn’t there.
* * * * *
Six months later, my boss stopped at my desk. “Okay, you’re done.” I signed some papers and received a one-month severance package for 7 years of service.
At the end of my first year, I had picked up part-time teaching through the local community college at UC San Diego for their Basic Writing program. Fortunately, I had that to turn to when I lost my job. At that time, online teaching boomed in the teaching world, and I was able to secure more teaching assignments. That led to full-time work as an adjunct professor of English.
Next week, I’ll tell you about the third time I was fired, again, not because of the dysfunction of my employer.
Thanks for reading. Stay safe out there and have an enjoyable Memorial Day weekend.
Until next time, I’ll . . .
Just keep writing!
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