09/01/10: You’re Fired
“You’re fired!”
We all know this clip of Donald Trump as he leans over the table, pompadour perfectly coiffed, menacing finger pointing. I wish it were that easy.
I was fired once, as a college intern on a horrible trade newspaper. It was about indoor air quality, really. My big “story” there was about an asbestos lawsuit in Florida. Anyhow, toward the end of my tenure, the editor called me in and said, “I understand you aren’t happy here.” I looked at her and said, “Uh, well where did you hear that?”, and she whipped out a paper and pushed it in front of me. There it was in black and white: a print out of an email I had written during a particularly boring afternoon. It was titled “A Monkey Could Do This Job.” Ouch.
“Kerstin, You’re fired.” OK, she didn’t say it like that, but gist was the same. (As you can imagine, I also learned a valuable lesson about employers and employee email.)
Well, recently I needed to fire someone. Not an employee though—a client. It was tricky. I did some good portfolio-level work for this company and on some level, kind of liked it. But then my contact left (and I now know why) and I was under the thumb of a raving lunatic.
Most of my strategies to fire this woman ended in failure. First, I said I had too much work and recommended two other designers. Neither worked out. She called me screaming about how incompetent they were and how could I recommend such horrible people. Then I conveniently had a baby. I thought this would be my ticket out. I still won’t forget during that first week after my son was born, the woman called me while I was breastfeeding and demanded that I email her a bunch of files. I had actually sent these files weeks before but she lost them. I told her I was in the middle of feeding my baby, and she said impatiently, “Well how long is that going to take?” Ugh.
Like the many-headed hydra, she recently came back. Like this:
Friday, 4:30pm: Email from her, subject line only, “R u around?” Um, I haven’t spoken to her in 6 months and we are not friends. You don’t do that to vendors. I decided to wait until Monday to deal with it.
Saturday, 2pm: Text from her: “R u around?”
Saturday, 9:30 pm (!!!!): Text from her: “Where r u?”
Ok, let’s stop here for a minute. It’s the weekend. If by around, do you mean am I in NYC with my family?, then yes, I’m around. If by around, do you mean have I been sitting here waiting to get underpaid and abused by you, then no, I’m not around. Who texts a vendor at 9:30 pm on a Saturday night? Actually, who texts a vendor at all? So not appropriate.
Sunday: 2:00 pm, Email (subject line only): WHERE R U? Yes, in all caps.
So on Monday, I was tempted to call her and bust out my best Donald impression. Instead, I sent a polite email saying that I don’t work on the weekends and that I’m not taking any additional work at this point. In other words, “Lady, you’re fired.”