Lesson learned. Again.

In more than 30 years of working, I've been fired from one job:

It was at a nonprofit (of course). I had moved more than 1000 miles across the USA for the job. Then Executive Director who had hired me quit several weeks after I started, leaving me with a PR disaster to solve at a time when there was a vibrant local press and their voice carried tremendous weight. I consider my strategy to avoid that PR disaster one of the greatest professional accomplishments of my life, but I never got to celebrate it: the new Executive Director loathed me from even before she started, calling the office before her first day to chew me out because a senior manager had given an interview my second week of work where she said some really indelicate things about lack of donor support - apparently, her words were my fault.

For the next 11 months, I was convinced I could win that new Executive Director over. Three months in, the Executive Director from my old job called to offer me my old, summer-only job back, telling me they just couldn't go on without me. And it was tempting to move back across the country and go back to what I had been doing... but, no, I was staying and I was going to turn this experience around! I made sure everything that came out of my mouth was a supportive and complimentary. If I got blamed for something, I just apologized and said I would do better and never offered any explanation or defense. I worked nights and weekends to make sure absolutely everything in my charge ran smoothly. I even socialized with some of the Executive Director's allies just to show what a good, fun person I am!

And I got fired anyway: she decided I did something a day before I should have done it. Yes, seriously. When I went to the unemployment office for the first and only time in my life, the agent said, "THAT's why you got fired? You want to fight that?!" No, thanks. Just give me a check until I get a temp job (got one starting the next week that paid WAY more than unemployment and turned into a two-year job that paid better than anything I'd ever done up to that point - even got profit sharing!).

The reality is I was doomed at that nonprofit from the start, and I had behaved like the adult child of an alcoholic that I am, thinking I could fix this toxic situation through plucky optimism and constant compliance. Months later, when I could finally think back on it and not cry, I realized that not only was I doomed from the start, but it had been a mistake to be so acquiescent. I wasn't just deferential - I was servile. I looked back on that time and was deeply ashamed of myself: if you get fired, it should at least be for who you REALLY are. It would have been so much better to get fired for speaking out than to get fired despite putting my tail between my legs and conceding in the face of every demeaning comment and criticism.

I don't regret getting fired from that job - it was inevitable and there is nothing I could have done to stop it. I regret my behavior leading up to the moment - my be-agreeable-at-all-costs-don't-upset-anyone walking-on-eggshells behavior.

I never behaved that way in a job ever again. Until recently. And the consequences were ALMOST the same - I wasn't fired, but my last day got moved up four weeks.

I should have spoken out immediately about the bullying and degrading comments and mismanagement. I should have said, "I know that this isn't something you really want to hear, but I have to bring this to your attention..." I didn't. I covered for the mismanagement and sometimes took the blame, just to get through the impending, urgent deadline and show a public-facing success. I held my tongue. And the consequences were almost the same. Once again, I regret far, far more what I didn't say than anything I did.

It is better to be criticized for doing something honestly and deliberately because you believe it is the best action to take for the benefit of the organization and per what your job description says you should be doing, than to try to avoid conflict. It is better to say, "This isn't working and here's the data to prove it..." or "Here is a problem that will need to be addressed..." than to sugar coat everything, or to just not say anything at all and hope for the best.

I did finally speak out. And if, as a result, I burned a bridge, so be it - I feel far, far better for saying what I have than for all I swallowed in pursuit of "Let's not upset her..."

And, as usual, it is amazing to me that my honesty and frankness, which would be celebrated and rewarded in a man, is criticized as "I don't like your tone" by a woman. And it also amazing to me that what one employer loves and rewards, another will reprimand.

Anyway... lesson learned. Again.

thoughtlessness and responsibility and the power of names

In the summer of 1986, I was the reporting intern at my hometown paper in Kentucky, The Gleaner. It was between my sophomore and junior year at university. I was so proud to have that job. I worked mostly the afternoon/evening shift, when the newsroom was all abuzz and all of the sports scores, front page news and obituaries were put together for the next day's paper (note: that shift no longer exists - the Indiana company that owns the paper now has pretty much closed The Gleaner, except the name, and won't take Henderson news after 5 p.m... but that's another blog...).

Small town newspapers were HUGELY important back then. This was where the community was documented for what we liked to pretend was forever, and in one, central place. Not only did everyone's day start by reading the newspaper, to be named in the newspaper was an incredible affirmation of a person's existence. That was true of everything in the newspaper back then, but it was true tenfold for obituaries.

I was in charge of the obituaries that summer. The funeral homes would call about an hour before I was off-shift and read information over the phone - there was no email nor fax machines. And usually, I would read what I had written down back to the person calling, to make sure I got it right before I handed it off to be put in the paper for the next day. But sometimes, I was lazy, and I didn't read it back. And one day, that laziness caught up with me: I got an obituary wrong. I got the last name wrong. It meant that the deceased and most of the family members were listed in the newspaper with the wrong last name.

The reprimand I got from the editor the next day was something I'll never forget. I remember all of his words: about how an obituary is a person's LAST story, that the person never, ever gets another chance to be profiled in the newspaper, it may be the ONLY time a person is ever named in the paper, and it's often the first and last time the entire family will be named, altogether, in the newspaper. He told me how the family looked to an obituary as the public affirmation of their tribe, their existence, their value - a moment when their family matters, because the family members are there, together, in print, for all to see. And he pointed out in oh-so-starkly terms that I had denied this family that, and that even with a correction a day later, they were still denied an experience that they were owed and could never get back.

I cried a lot over my mistake - in the bathroom at work and later at home. I felt horrible. I felt the anger and sadness of that family that I'd never met even though I never heard what they said to the editor. I also didn't think they were over-reacting, or that they shouldn't be THAT upset, or that they should just get over it. I never denied what they were feeling and their right to feel that way. I fully accepted responsibility and that I was the cause of it. I also felt deep regret at my thoughtlessness. I wish I had written that family a letter of apology, even if they had torn it up and thrown it back in my face.

That experience more than 30 years ago hit me like a ton of bricks this morning: my name was left out of my grandmother's obituary in The Gleaner. A first name is there, one spelled exactly like mine, but the last name is one I've never had, that I've never used, that I've never said and that I've never written. But someone in my family gave this incorrect last name, per just as much thoughtlessness I had back in 1986. Because of that thoughtlessness, I'm not there, and that can never be changed. And the pain of not being there is real. It's shattering.

And I am not wrong, or over-reacting, at feeling this upset.

I had decided a few days ago not to fly home for the funeral, to be sensible rather than emotional: I was just there, I spent two wonderful mornings with my grandmother just last month, all of the arrangements are made and my help isn't needed, I have reservations somewhere for Friday and Saturday, it's crazy to fly at this time of year, I might get stuck at an airport rather than even make it back to Kentucky... it means not having to fight through holiday air or car traffic, not having to sit on a plan or an airport for 10 hours one way, not having to rent a car, not having to miss out on very special plans I made with my husband...

It also means not having arms around me over and over from people in my hometown, saying how sorry they are, how they can see this or that from my grandmother in me, it means not being together as a family at a very visible, important moment, it means not going through a ritual that helps me so deeply. It means feeling very, very alone.

And now, it feels even more so.