The Eight Stages of Termination

There are distinct stages of termination realization -- I can unequivocably claim expertise in this area because I've lost three jobs in three years. I don't like saying I've lost a job, because it's so inaccurate. I mean, I know exactly where my jobs were and still are.... it's just that someone else is there doing them.

The First Stage sends a rush of stunned tears welling into your eyes. You don't dare blink for fear those traitorous rivulets will go streaking down your cheeks and make room for more. Lips tremble. Hands shake. There's a queer hollow feeling in the pit of your stomach as it shrivels into itself like a black hole collapsing. This is accompanied by disbelief and denial, a desperate hope that you have not heard correctly, or that this isn't a termination, but a poorly expressed promotion of some kind.

As the full knowledge begins to sink into your numbed brain, you enter the second stage. Now, if you are at home alone, for example, you can slide directly into Stage Three: hysterical sobbing. But for me, having all three of my terminations coming in the workplace, where you are exposed -- naked -- in front of the world as the rug is pulled from beneath your feet -- well, then Stage Two is one of the worst.

Often you have to stammer some kind of response to the person who has just sentenced you to peanut butter and jelly for the foreseeable future. What do you say, anyway? Thank you? I'm sorry? Please, please, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T DO THIS TO ME?!!?

It's all you can do to hang on to the last shred of your dignity as you stumble to your desk, blindly cramming all the personal belongings that will fit into your purse and inevitably missing some of them that you will never see again.

The last two times, I was escorted by supervisors to my desk. This is adding insult to injury with the unspoken suspicion that you might be capable of either theft or sabotage if you are not watched carefully. Maybe they are worried you might have an automatic rifle hidden under your desk, i dunno.

This time, it was assumed i would simply not be at the office, and therefore was told not to return to the scene of the crime. But not having gotten the message until the next morning, there i was at my desk. The woman whose messages I returned told me DO NOT REMOVE ANYTHING FROM YOUR DESK. But i was damned if i was gonna leave the more important items sitting there. Even so, I felt like a thief as I gathered what I could.

Stage Two also includes downcast eyes and averted face, trying desperately not to meet anyone's eye. You don't want to see the look of confusion and the question in their faces. Or worse, you don't want to see THEIR failure to meet your eyes because they KNOW you've been fired. It's like a scarlet letter on your chest or a mark of Cain on your forehead. Suddenly you have the plague and even your friendly coworkers want you gone quickly for fear you're contagious. Even the most sympathetic looks are an anathema to you, because the slightest hint of pity will cause you to plunge into Stage Three. When one of those sympathetic eyes do meet yours, asking what's wrong... This triggers more sniveling tears as you was forced to whisper those hateful words that you will be repeating to everyone: "I've bbbbbeeeen.... TERMINATED." Snivel, sniff, sniff. Wipe tears from your cheeks.

You don't want to enter Stage Three until you are absolutely safe from the eyes of world because it isn't pretty. I managed to save Step Three until I was hidden in my car in the parking lot. I couldn't start the car yet, because I was too busy sobbing in full force. It's always sobbing, not crying. Crying is too timid and lukewarm a word to be truly descriptive.

It's either the kind of sobbing pulled from so deep inside you that there is no sound but for the occasional gulp of breath in between gut-wrenching facial contortions. Or it's the type of crying that comes with moans of pure vowels, like an animal in a trap. I started with the former and ended with the latter. Either way, you are pitiful pathetic mess, not caring that snot is running freely from your nose.

Step Four begins when you can manage to put the keys into the ignition, and leave the parking lot. You are trying to stop crying, and begin to snivel and whimper. You may slip back and forth into the hysterical sobbing, but all of it is accompanied by the first thoughts you can actually begin to form. Most of these thoughts are "why? why me? what did i do? Why don't they want me?"

I really thought i was doing well at my last temp posting, the one that was terminated early. I had gotten a raise in the first two weeks, and told that they were very pleased with me. Then BOOM. Why did they let me go? I was told only that I was "still asking too many questions." Or it may have been that the week before was that terrible drop in the stock market that had scared the crap out of every corporation on earth.

Stage Five begins with the childlike disbelief as you turn that reason for your termination over and over in your mind, trying to bend your brain around it. I began to whimper, "But i thought i was supposed to ask questions? Everybody told me, you can ask the people around you, we're glad to help. You can't possibly get all of this stuff down right away."

Stage Six begins when your attempt to understand start to gel into anger. What do they mean, i asked TOO MANY questions? What was I supposed to do? Just make stuff up and get the caller off the phone and let them call back an hour later when they realized the problem still wasn't fixed? I'm not stupid, after all. The people who trained me said I was catching on quickly, faster than most of the other people they had trained... In Stage Six, you are crying in anger and outrage and disappointment.

(All i can figure is that maybe I was trying to hard, refusing to give up when the standard troubleshooting failed to resolve the problem. And because, in my belief that I should be learning as much as possible not only about how to solve the problem, but what caused the problem in the first place, maybe I was asking too many questions.I had said just the day before to Rhonda that i hoped I was doing okay, that I hadn't gotten any feedback yet about whether my stats were acceptable... and Rhonda's response was: "Don't worry. If your stats are bad, they will tell you."

Maybe I was naive to think that someone would say, You know, Belinda, you're not doing this right. If I had known that firing could come so quickly and so unexpectedly, I would have keep my mouth shut about anything and everything. I wouldn't have asked where the bathroom was. I would have just wandered around till i found it. Maybe that was what I was supposed to do. Shut up and fake it. sigh)

Stage Seven begins when you have to force yourself to stop crying, because you have no kleenex in the car or your purse, and you can't breathe. A numb sort of resignation creeps over you, and a bone-deep fatigue begins to pull you down. All you want to do is find a dark hole to crawl into. Your only motivation to keep moving is to get to your bed where you can clasp your pillow like a life-preserver and curl into a fetal position.

Stage Eight is spent in that fetal position, pillow over your face, the pillow case soggy as you are tossed back and forth on waves of tears. You may even backslide all the way to Stage Three and have to start all over again.

I have now settled into a fatalistic cynicism, broken only by bouts of hysterical sobbing that is now rooted in panic about what the hell I am going to do. (I know I keep repeating "hysterical sobbing" but there is really no other term for it. It is sobbing... and hysterical.)

Sure, there are occasional bursts of a soul-deep self loathing as I wallow in total rejection, a growing certainty that I am worthless, incompetent and useless, of being judged as not good enough. Doubts that in my personal life and my art as well, I'm unwanted and worthless, second-class. A fuck-up. Again those outraged cries of "but this is not who I am.... I am not the kind of person who gets fired. I'm smart, I'm competent, I've always been the good girl that gets things done....how in the hell did i get HERE?"