Matthew Gates 2m 592 #respect
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
Six years ago, I trained a man who would become my boss in the corporate world. After I trained him, he thought he knew enough to become confident enough to feel it was his duty to constantly threaten to fire me, which he did for many years. It began as a daily, then a weekly, then a monthly.. threats of being fired lured over me and fear drove me to do my job. I lived in constant fear everyday of losing my job. For about a month or two, things were going well and I thought he and I were good. He seemed to back off. But I had my suspicions the man would never change.
It was always in the back of my mind. Then COVID hit… and his threats came again… and finally, I said to him, “I’ve been putting up with you for 6 years.. you’ve been putting up with me for 6 years… you know how I work, yet you keep threatening to fire me. It’s a pandemic and they’ve already laid off half of the staff already, but yet, here you and I still are. Now is your time to get rid of me. Stop talking about it and do it already. Come back at me with a decent severance package.. I don’t want a bullshit 3 weeks. I want 6 months, the same I’d get if I were to go to unemployment. If you can’t do that, then fire me and I’ll get my paycheck through the unemployment office. Don’t call me again until you’ve got an answer for me.”
I waited. A month. Two months. Three months. All this time, he hadn’t called me, hadn’t said hi to me, hadn’t spoken a word. I figured he was busy working on getting me fired. Then the news came on the fourth month. An emergency Zoom meeting was called. All the big bosses were there. My co-workers were there. I was there. There was only one person who was absent.
My boss. The meeting that they called was to let everyone know my boss had been fired. He was with the company for 20 years. I am with the company going on 9 years now. I’m a man who shows up to work and does my job. He’s a man who showed up to work and threatened to fire people who he thought weren’t doing their jobs. No pleasant goodbyes. Terminated like he meant nothing.
Don’t be afraid to command the respect you deserve and call people out on their bullshit. Never let anyone instill such fear in you that you forget to be a man, speak like a man, and think and act like a man. I wish I called that asshole out 6 years ago. It’s been 4 months without that asshole and life has been better for me. I’ve since gotten a new boss, who happens to be a woman, but I established the command of respect early on. Not here to be friends, but here to ensure our company meets its goals, everyone makes money, and we can all work without living in fear. A vision she shares with me and it has been very pleasant.
Thanks for reading. Just wanted to share my story. Don’t ever let anyone at work, at home, or anywhere disrespect you, and if they do, don’t hesitate to call them out on it. Life is way too fucking short to worry about losing a job or have a fear of getting fired. It’s even shorter.. when you realize you ain’t got time for being disrespected.
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