You're Fired!

And just like that, it all comes to an end - your job that is. Some are fortunate enough to work to retirement age when, the office throws them a party with a cake, card signed by all staff, drinks are quaffed and after about three hours of partying, off they go into the twilight. And despite promises to keep in touch, in reality, once you’ve gone, you’ve gone. A week later, nobody from your office will remember you. Instead, you will be: “Anybody remember the name of that person who retired a few days ago…?”

Of course not all people retire. Some get fired. Others dragged out of their offices, while some turn up the next day to find the locks to their offices changed overnight. When it’s time to go, we all react in different ways.

Back in the day in the US, it was a tricky affair if you were the Human Resource Manager for the US postal service. When rank-and-file employees got fired, they took it in their stride, packed their belongings into a box and went home. After two beers, they would change into military fatigues, head to the basement and a pack the odd AK-47, a couple of pistols, some grenades and return to their former workplace and mow down the entire department especially Human Resource who had fired them.

Sara, is what I would call a friend of a friend of a friend. I met her once and my assessment of her is that she is the type who is a polite introvert, went to Gayaza, then on to Makerere University though didn’t stay in halls but commuted from her parents’ house and currently, she probably holds down some insignificant job with one of the corporate companies.

I was right. She did go to Gayaza, she was a polite introvert and she used to have an insignificant in one of the corporate companies. However, there is a BUT in that she went out of her way to mask her dark side. When Human Resource called Sara to her office with the bad news that she was being let go, of course she had nothing to worry about because Sara was the polite office introvert.

With papers served and termination cheque in hand, Sara stood up to leave but didn’t make a move towards the door. Instead, she flung herself over the desk administered a few hot slaps at Human Resource, bit her three times in the neck and tore her blouse to what witnesses described as ‘strips of pasta’. By the time help arrived, all the possible living the daylights had been flogged out of Human Resource.

I used to work with Cliff aka ‘shifty eyes’. Shifty Eyes joined us on the backbone of a presentation he had made to the bosses of how he could turn the company round in a matter of months. But he didn’t deliver and perhaps sensing he might be rumbled, when we went home after work, it was the last time we ever heard of him.

In due course, his e-mail account was deactivated and the day his cellphone number was removed from the office WhatApp Group, I bumped into him that evening. The conversation that unraveled went along these lines.

Shifty Eyes: “TB, have I been fired because my name was removed from the WhatsApp Group?”

TB: “You’ve been AWOL for three weeks so what do you think?”               

Shifty Eyes: “Hmm, do you think I should come in tomorrow and speak to Jad (the boss)?”

TB: “Jeez, WTF you been smoking!?!

However, some people have no reaction at all like House-ee, Askari and Waitress because they ‘fire’ themselves. Whenever they let it be known that they want to go to kyalo to see their sister or to bury, just know they won’t be coming back.

Pictures: Internet