Member-only story
A Short Story About Getting Fired
One tiny mistake and, boom, ya done.
Note: Hey readers, I’d like to experiment with more short-story fiction this year. So here’s something.
“We can help save you from the tornado of paperwork you might find yourself in,” I’d said to the person on the other end of the phone.
Now, did I know this person’s entire family died in a tornado? No. How could I? So why am I getting fired because of that?
That’s literally a line my boss wrote in the sales script I’ve been using since I got here 3 months ago. By now I knew it like the back of my cat’s asshole.
When you make a hundred cold-calls and e-mails a day to businesses, trying to sell them on our “easy paperless expense reporting service,” that shit’ll get tattooed into your head pretty quick.
And now I’m getting the axe because of it.
Because, of all the thousands of people I’ve called, of course I had to get this one guy in Kansas who had his entire family killed in a tornado 12 years ago. God, I’ll never forget the sounds of his half-sobbing-half-screaming at me over the phone, informing me that all 54 members of his immediate and extended family died in that tornado that swept through town, except for him. The dog survived too, but some people only like to…
