I Was Fired!

And it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Living the Life

Fresh out of Barnard College and the Speedwriting Institute, I was hired as a secretary to the editor of Coupon Magazine. Tiny circulation, but a real job. So now I had an income and an apartment in Manhattan: heaven for a young woman from a small town on Long Island.

For six months, I was living the Sex and the City life. Like so many women of my generation, I went straight from college to secretarial school to learn shorthand, or speedwriting, despite the fact that I had already co-written a book called New York on $5 a Day. So I learned the ropes, or at least I tried.

Now, we worked out of a hotel penthouse suite, and the place had become a crash pad for my boss's hard-partying friends. Just to get to my desk some mornings I had to step over Lenny Bruce, the foulmouthed comedian, or his buddy Weegee, a news photographer. (The comic community now considers Lenny a legend, and Weegee's photographs grace the walls of museums and galleries. At the time, I'd never heard of them.)

As a former lefty turned righty, thanks to an overzealous teacher, I had distinctly illegible handwriting -- so bad that after taking dictation, I couldn't translate it. The magazine was advertising dependent, so in letters to the heads of major corporations, I was told to offer them the opportunity to place their ads in four colors in our magazine for the mere price of $10,000. Inadvertently, the d in ads became an s, and the president of one of those big companies was invited to "have his ass in four colors" in our publication.

Guess what? He didn't like it, and demanded my, well ... you get the idea. I was fired, but luck showed her face. The editor was desperate for a copywriter. I was heading for the door, dejected, afraid of what my parents would think, when I heard her call out, "You -- Joan! Can you write better than you can type?" I said, "Yes, of course." A copywriter was born.

When the magazine folded, and the off-off-Broadway troupe I was in (I was also a struggling actress) lost a lot of its audience (mostly my relatives), I got a chance to audition for a two-hour daily radio program on a major New York station. To everyone's surprise, I got the job.

"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."

Spread Your Wings

Lynn Sherr, ABC's award-winning television correspondent, writes in Outside the Box, her autobiography, that she was gainfully employed at WCBS-TV in New York when someone handed her the early edition of the Post. In the back, there was a story stating that Lynn Sherr was leaving CBS to write a book. Thinking that it was a ruse to keep her in line, she didn't worry, but then her news director's deputy called: "Your contract is not being renewed, and you won't be on the air anymore. You can pick up your stuff at any time."

Says Lynn, "I felt like a failure." Worse yet, when an unnamed executive was asked why he let her go, he answered, "Her shoulders were too wide for a closeup shot."

"In retrospect," Lynn writes, "I was only 32, and it did turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. It proved I could stand on my own and not give up. It was about breaking out in order to break into the next level." She landed at ABC News, covering political campaigns, conventions and special events, and later, features on 20/20. She's been there ever since.

And sometimes you don't realize it, but you're asking to be fired. Dan Zawacki was a happy camper, selling computers for Honeywell. One holiday he was searching for creative gifts and came up with the idea of sending dinner -- live lobsters -- to his favorite clients. He packaged them himself with butter and a nutcracker, stuffed them in the trunk of his car between the computers and started delivering. It was a huge success. In fact, one client suggested they go into the lobster business together. Dan laughed.

Still, this landlocked computer salesman couldn't get the idea of lobsters out of his mind. Why not turn this into a hobby and make a few extra dollars? While on a job assignment in Chicago, he convinced a local radio station to give him a few plugs in exchange for lobster. Unfortunately, his boss's boss heard his prize salesman hawking lobsters, not computers. No surprise, Dan was let go.

After returning the company car, he started to think maybe this was an omen. Playing with his phone that night, Dan tried dialing 1-800-LIVE-LOB. The number was available, and Dan the Lobsterman was born. Today, 20 years later, Dan is still selling dinners, through his company, Lobster Gram. And he couldn't be happier.

Each of these people found a way back to a fulfilling career. And they all learned that the pain and humiliation are temporary. So don't be afraid to move on and try your wings. Rally your support system. Persevere! Firing doesn't mean your life is over. It might turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you.