Member-only story
The Day I Got Fired
and What It Ultimately Led To
The message flashed up in my e-mail like an outlaw tide in an otherwise peaceful Monday morning. Subject: “Regarding Your Employment at Innovate Solutions.” My stomach rolled with nervous unease. I knew things had been. tense. The previous project had flopped, deadlines had slipped by, and the office had hung low with unsaid dreads. But “terminated”? The very word seemed raw, irrevocable.
The meeting was short, clinical. A HR administrator with sharpened empathy and a manager whose eyes kept drifting towards the clock broke the news. Restructuring. My position was redundant. A polite exit package, a handshake, and then… the eerie quiet of my newly empty desk.
Stepping out of the gleaming glass doors of Innovate Solutions that day felt unreal. Bengaluru’s familiar cacophonous chorus of traffic and chatter seemed muted, distant. I was adrift, a ship newly launched from the shore. My identity, so tied up in my “Senior Marketing Manager” position, was undone. Anxiety gnawed at the edges of my tranquility. How would I pay the rent? How would I tell my family? The carefully constructed narrative of my professional life seemed to have been reduced to dust.
For a few weeks, I languished. There were pajama days, driven by cups of chai that never seemed to dry up and the soft glow of the…
