Getting fired.

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(This section was written on the Friday of Labor Day weekend, the day it happened)

I was let go today, after 6 1/2 years with my company. 5 of those years I did great work. I was a HARD worker. I picked up on things quickly. I didn’t mess around, other than a little water cooler talk here and there. Then, I got pregnant, and had a baby. And from that point on, things were not the same. I still worked hard, but I spent more and more time doing non-work things during work hours. Mostly reading blogs or visiting facebook. If someone else had told me they were doing those things at their job I would have judged them as lazy. I would have said “You are going to get fired. You need to stop doing that.” And I would have assumed that if they didn’t stop that they were stupid. That they were arrogant to believe that it wasn’t a big deal. Probably I would have thought “They deserved it,” if I heard they got fired. And I would have been right. Kind of.

As you always find out when you are on the other side of something that is being judged, there is no such thing as a black and white world. Yes, a person who does personal business while being paid is doing something wrong. That part IS black and white. But I still don’t think of myself as lazy, despite what all of you might think. Improperly motivated, yes. Naive (maybe stupid) about thinking that I could do my job just as well while visiting the internet in between tasks as if I wasn’t? Definitely. But not lazy, and I also don’t think that I am bereft of morals about the workplace either. I know what hard work is. I would imagine that my family is almost as mortified as I am that they raised a daughter who was fired for something so…stupid. But there it is. The fact that when the issue was brought to my attention last spring and I fixed the workload part of it is beside the point, I guess. I no longer read blogs while I was at work, and I cut back on the other stuff too. My former employer focused in on the visiting non-work related sites by itself, and that is their prerogative.

So, where do I go from here? What kind of a job do I look for? Will I be able to even FIND a job, in this economy, with this black mark against me? I don’t know. I sure hope that I can find a job. In the interim one that pays the bills, but I’m hoping to use this opportunity to do something that I should have been more proactive about. I have known for quite a while that this job was not a permanent one for me. Now that I’m not there, I can honestly say that I had grown to hate my job. I have written about it here before. But I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and I let fear of choosing wrong/not getting the job I wanted stop me from pursuing something different.

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(Back to present day)

In the couple weeks since this happened, I have been staying home with James. It has been wonderful and frustrating and awesome and horrible, sometimes in quick succession. Today, for instance, we had a great time this morning down at the canal, watching boats come in and go out, and touring the museum. Then, he had a doctor’s appointment that went great (29lbs, 33 inches), and then we went home. And he wouldn’t nap. And he was being a terror. Finally I realized I should just put him in the car and go for a drive, because he’d probably pass out. So I did. He slept for maybe an hour. I read in the parking lot at the mall. When we got home he was mostly great. Until he hit me HARD in the face with a hard plastic toy. Intentionally, because I wasn’t looking at him when he wanted me to. That was probably the 4th time-out for today, and there was no prior warning on it. Some things do not require a warning, I think. But nothing makes me feel like a terrible mother like admitting that I gave my 19 month old 4 time-outs in one day. They aren’t long, but I am unsure what else I am supposed to do when he intentionally throws food or bites me/tries to bite me repeatedly.

Thankfully, days like today are not the norm. He is usually a really good kid. And so I can say wholeheartedly that I am glad to be spending this time with him at home while I look for another job and figure out what I want to do next.