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StumbleUpon"You're Fired!"
This time my family was filling mailbags, writing letters to the station to say how outstanding that new girl was. At last, I had found my niche -- talking was where it was at.One day, a new presence arrived at the station, a female program director. This large and formidable woman came to work every day with an equally large and formidable German shepherd. I thought I was doing a great job. She (the woman, not the dog) decided she didn't like me. When she called me into her office one Friday afternoon, she simply said, "You're fired!" leaving me to wonder what had gone so terribly wrong.
Six months later, after calling every program director in town, I went to work for another major-market radio station, doing four-minute stories for a low $15 each. With two young children and a husband who was just starting his own career, I took a chance.
Today, some 28 years later, I am still at WOR Radio with a two-hour daily talk show interviewing celebrities, authors and politicians, imparting information to more than a million listeners a week and loving every minute of it.
I was young when those firings happened, but the process is still the same. Firings know no age or gender. The trick is to get out from under the covers and make things happen. This is exactly what Sherrye Henry did.
Sherrye, returning home to New York City after a successful political career with the Clinton Administration and working on the Hill, was looking forward to a change of pace as a development officer for a large nonprofit. When the organization hit turbulent financial water, and she was the last one in, she was the first one out. Says Sherrye, "This wasn't the first job I had lost. Hard as it is, one must remember that there is always life after losing a job." Helpful friends, tenacity, good luck and a good résumé got Sherrye back on track. Within a month, she landed what she calls the most satisfying job of her life: raising money for Episcopal Relief and Development, which provides emergency assistance to people in 40 countries.
Paul Jones has a different story. He had started at what is now JPMorgan Chase as a high school student and climbed through the ranks to vice president. His 31-year career ended when his job was outsourced to India. Paul was only in his 40s, and although there was no pension, he was offered a two-year buyout. With the children out of school, he and his wife made a decision: no more corporate stress. They would do their own thing.
That happened to be a love of spirits (cognac, to be specific) and travel. Paul recently started a business developing and marketing cognac for the female market. He is his own boss, and he is filled with a new sense of adventure and excitement. "Had they not pushed me out," he says, "I would still be there waiting for the ax to fall."
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