Unfiltered Story #293130

*When I graduated from college, a family friend managed to get me a job with the IT company that did IT for his job. His boss was friends with the owner of the IT company and knew they were looking for someone and because my friend was talking about it his boss put my name forward. I worked there for about 9 months as a Helpdesk Engineer before they fired me (told me they “wanted to take the position in a different direction”; by that point I was essentially acting as the owner’s secretary so I don’t know why they didn’t just move me into that role, but that’s not the point of this story). Of course, the day they fired me, I was supremely upset with myself over what had happened, but I was also upset because I was feeling like I let the friend down.

So I called him in tears as I was driving home and asked if he could stop by our house because I wanted to tell him and not have him hear it from the boss/IT company. I got home and shortly thereafter, he pulled into the driveway. In tears, I explained that they’d fired me. I knew he wouldn’t blow up or anything but I just didn’t want to have let him down. Instead, he hugged me.*

Friend: Hey, you didn’t do anything wrong. You’ll get fired from jobs every once in a while, it is what it is. You did your best at the job, and this was your first job out of college; you’re still learning

Me: Yeah, but you really pushed them to hire me.

Friend: Because I knew you could do it. If they don’t want you there, that’s their choice.

*He then took me to lunch and helped me calm down. I think my biggest problem was that I had been upset about letting him down. And timing being what it was, I was still living at home and we were actually in the middle of a move that was having to happen on a kind of condensed timeline so being without work allowed me to work on packing during the day so my parents had less stress involved in the whole thing.

I have since found a job (admittedly it took a few years and a couple of horrible jobs along with a couple of contracts that ended), one that I like and seems to like me and even worked with me to get the ability to work from home so that I could move to a different state.*