You’re being fired.  Following my earlier advice, you haven’t resigned and you’ve asked yourself whether any of your legal rights may have been violated and now have some very tentative answers.  It’s time to ask yourself some hard questions. 

• What are my goals in this situation?  
• Are they realistic?

What are my goals?

The first reaction most people have when they learn they’re being fired is to want to fight tooth and nail to reverse the decision or prevent the actual termination from occurring.  Far more than merely posing an economic hardship or challenge, being fired can be a profoundly humiliating experience, and most people’s first impulse is to try to prevent or undo that humiliation by getting their employer to change his or her mind.

After more deliberation, however, many people will realize that they don’t, in fact, want above all else to hold on to their job.   It’s a rare person who is fired from a satisfying job working for a company he/she likes with a team or a supervisor that he/she appreciates and respects.  To the contrary, most people, by the time the axe falls, are already having a miserable experience at work.

So once the initial shock of losing your job wears off, ask yourself: do I really want to go back to that workplace?   Even if I could get the boss to reverse the decision to fire me – for example, to “give me one more chance” – am I really prepared to return to that job?  Or might I be much happier, all things being equal, getting a new job at a new place, with new coworkers and a new boss who just might appreciate me for what I’m really worth?   If so, what is it that I really should be trying to get out of this situation?

The goals of people who have been fired can almost invariably be summarized by one or more of the following four statements:

1. They want their job back.
2. They want money from their soon-to-be ex-employer.
3. They want to regain their self-respect.
4. They want justice.

Because each of these goals need to be pursued in a different way, it is vital for the fired employee to think through, as much as possible, which of these statements apply to their particular situation. 

Are my goals realistic?

1. Getting my job back.

Getting your job back is going to be hard.   With the exception of people who work in a unionized workplace, where they are protected by the “just cause” provision of a collective bargaining agreement, there is typically no meaningful and accessible means by which you can even get an employer to think about changing its mind about a termination.

This is true even where a company has a Human Resources department to which you can appeal a decision of your supervisor.   Companies, like oil tankers, have enormous inertia.  Once they’ve started in a particular direction, they’re almost impossible to stop or divert, even if they’re headed for trouble.  There may, at some point in recorded history, have been a situation where higher-ups in a company bureaucracy were successfully persuaded that the personnel decisions of a subordinate supervisor were erroneous and needed to be countermanded.  I would not, however, bet on this happening.

Often, even a successful lawsuit will not result in an order returning the employee to work.   You might get “back pay” – wages you would have earned up until the date of the verdict had you not been fired, you might get “emotional distress damages,” you might be awarded “punitive damages,” you might be awarded attorneys fees, and you might even be awarded “front pay” – wages you would have earned going forward into the future, based on an assessment of how long you would have worked for this company even after the date of the verdict – but courts are hugely reluctant to force employers to take back employees whom they have fired. 

2. Getting money from my employer.

Vastly more likely than getting your job back is the possibility of getting some kind of financial compensation from your former or soon-to-be former employer. 

This financial compensation may be in the form of a severance package that is more generous than the one your employer initially offered to you.   Or it may be a result of a verdict or settlement reached after the employer has filed a lawsuit.  But most (not all) employers, as businesspeople, can be persuaded when the circumstances are right to shell out more cash than they initially offered to a soon-to-be ex-employee. They usually have to be convinced, however, that this will buy them peace, certainty, and a clear view of the soon-to-be ex-employee's backside leaving the premises for good.

To be continued…