Congratulations! You’ve been Fired!

They always have such fancy terms for being fired.

  • let go. No we don’t want to hold you back any longer, we’re ‘letting’ you go. Or maybe you were holding on too tight to the security rope of your job and they couldn’t hold your weight any longer, so they let go…aaaaaaaayeeeee!
  • re-trenched sounds very war or sports analogous. We’re putting you back in the trenches, you’ve been benched. Or worse, having a ditch dug for you to lie down in — permanently.
  • redundant. what does that even mean? They hired 2 people (or more) to do the same job? Who stuffed that up? Ahem, I think the hirer should be fired first!
  • Then you hear down-sized a lot (especially after the dot com boom), very politically correct and impersonal. Hey, nothing to do with me, it was the company, got too big, market turned sour. Usually more true than any other scenario.
  • Then there’s always the ol’ getting the pink slip. Very early 20th century.

I think of all the synonyms, I like freed the best.

Congratulations! You’ve been freed to pursue the next best thing in your life! I realised it was unplanned on your part, but everyone needs a little nudge now and then. The bright side is you can think of it as a favour.

[written to a friend who recently got [ahem] re-trenched].