I Was Fired Three Years Short Of Retirement Because Of My 'Attitude'
I thought I was just being honest, but my employer saw it as a problem.
Tima Miroshnichenko | Canva I started writing this piece a few weeks after my new boss and the HR manager told me I was laid off as of that conversation. That was in June 2024. It’s now March 2025, and I am ready to finish that story.
Officially, I was let go because the “business had changed,” and there wasn’t enough work for me.
Considering that I was given a raise a month earlier, I have concluded that I was fired three years short of retirement because of my attitude.
Shockingly, I was surprised when I got that call that beautiful summer morning. How naïve could I have been at the ripe age of 62 and having worked in corporate for many years?
Sure, I was in the right about the company’s mismanagement of my annual vacation entitlement. HR admitted it as much. The automated software mistakenly allowed me to use an extra week of vacation in 2023 and then cut that week from my 2024 allotment.
But I had already made plans for the summer, so I offered to buy the extra week I needed. After two months of back and forth, HR refused. I couldn’t believe HR suggested I make up whatever work-hour appointments for dental work, medical, or whatever on weekends or after hours.
I got ticked off with the company. Along with the new rules about accounting for every hour and every activity of the day, I felt like an indentured servant to this company.
fizkes / Shutterstock
I asked HR if there was any recourse to their decision. They suggested an email to management. Okay, one more email. Instead of playing nice this time, I couldn’t resist a sarcastic tone and mocking HR’s suggested “solution.” Then, ignoring the 24-hour rule to cool off, I hit send. For some reason, I felt that secure in my job.
About a month went by, and here we are. I had almost forgotten about that email. I remembered it in the middle of the night a couple of days after my layoff. The reality of the situation sank in, ruining my sleep.
Effectively, I had lost my highest-paying job, which I expected to ride out till retirement, over my attitude over a week of vacation.
Yes, I more or less hated my job by then. My third new boss promised to be better than the second one, who had fired all the men in our communications department except for me and then rode me like a donkey until she found better prospects at a multinational company.
But I had just turned 62. I knew I wouldn’t find a replacement job like this anytime soon — or ever.
The layoff forced me to consider early retirement. A visit to a financial planner suggested that I could afford to do it. But I wasn’t ready to retire, mainly since my wife was still working.
I occasionally lamented my dismissal, but I reminded myself that I was trading time for money, and it felt terrible. The same feeling drove me from the corporate world to write for a living in 2000.
Then I spent twenty years as a freelancer feature writer and then a magazine staff writer until our 60-year-old publication went under. Only the last four years were in communications.
That parallel held a lesson for me. Corporate work didn’t sit well with me.
I started to understand my layoff as an unconscious decision because I wasn’t strong enough to consciously end a work situation that wasn’t serving me anymore.
Had I been more aware and talked this through with friends and family, I could have at least tried negotiating part-time work or quit and left an open door for contract work.
If there is a shadow in us, as Carl Jung proposed, my shadow personality acts out and overpowers my sensible conscious personality. My shadow chose a radical solution because I wasn’t willing to integrate all the negative feelings about my work by then.
So now, I had to set about creating a better work-life balance. But it was more complicated than I expected. My efforts dredged up regrets, resentments, and dark introspection.
I put off connecting with my network of LinkedIn contacts, former editors, and colleagues. Many of the people I knew had moved to other fields after COVID-19 or had retired. I started to hate the smiley, familiar faces on LinkedIn promoting the company I used to work for. So, I rarely opened the app.
I realized that COVID had also changed me. This came to me after hearing a talk by a Harvard professor. He said there are four pillars of happiness: God, family, friends, and career.
God, with a big G, hasn’t been on my radar since Grade One when my dad said I shouldn’t go to Sunday school just for the free hot dogs. God with a small g was always a work in progress. But with the loss of my job, all four pillars of my happiness had collapsed: my wife to grief, my daughter to her high-powered international career, my parents to time, and others I won’t mention here.
I always felt I would return to writing. But now, there are fewer magazines for freelancers to chase, and there is a new generation of competition. So many people want to be writers today.
Renata Photography / Shutterstock
For a while, I toyed with trying to earn a living on platforms like Medium and Substack, writing about whatever I wanted to write about. It was a pleasant daydream, but not workable for me. My growing isolation and lack of monetary validation relegated it to a hobby.
I wanted more connections with people, not less. I still wanted to earn a living. So, I considered switching out of writing altogether. I took into account my past work experience.
When I was in my 20s, I worked as a contractor, and again in my 50s when I built an addition to our house. I had always been interested in structural insulated panels as a building system and pitched to a few companies to see how I could fit in. No one replied.
Then, I thought of buying a business. But did I want to risk the money we had saved for our retirement? What about starting a business, then, like a low-carb frozen soups and stews service?
After researching, talking to many people, and crunching the numbers, I concluded there was too much competition and uncertainty for the venture in my city. Besides, I didn’t love cooking that much.
It was a difficult half year after my layoff until I woke up from my stupor.
I looked through my network of contacts with a new resolve to use my writing skills to help people solve concrete, practical problems. I set up some meetings, and just like that, my second coffee meet-up landed me a mental health report project for a former colleague from my magazine days.
She had just taken a full-time job, which she preferred over running her own business. And she was out of time to write the report. So, I wrote it for her. The pay was decent. The work was hard, the timelines were tight, and I was stressed at times. It wasn’t ideal, but it was solid and meaningful work.
I feel that I am back in my skin now. I’m not making as much money, but that’s okay. At least I don’t feel like an indentured servant. The future is bright once again.
Mat Ludvik is a writer whose articles have been featured in the Globe& Mail, Medium, and a handful of consumer and business-to-business publications.
