Why The Phoenix?

There are a lot of accounts of what the Phoenix represents and how it came to be what it represents today. They are all derived from some source of mythology and so undoubtedly we can find people who might believe in a literal bird burning itself up every 500 years and then becoming a new bird, there’s not a YouTube video someone has done of a bird actually doing this. For one thing they have no opposing thumbs and therefore cannot probably strike a match and start a fire and the whole "beat the wings while looking at the sun and starting a fire" is a bit of a stretch in reality even when talking mythologically. The following comes from the website, http://monsters.monstrous.com/phoenix.htm:

Its name comes from the Greek word for "purple" because the phoenix is associated with fire and the sun. It has been described as golden or multicolored. Some say it never eats. Others say it eats only dew. Most believe there is only one of its kind and it lives alone in Arabia or Ethiopia. All agree it is a bird of great beauty.

Powers
The Phoenix enjoys immortality, which had to be renewed with fire every 300 to 500 years. When the end of its life cycle drew near, the phoenix would gather aromatic herbs, woods, and spices from around the world with which to build its own funeral pyre or nest.

Sitting in the nest, and having turned to face the rays of the sun, beating its wings, it deliberately fans the flames for itself and is consumed in the fire. Once the old body was consumed, the phoenix would be reborn from a worm, its marrow, or an egg found among the ashes and would embark on another 500 years of life.

According to some legends, the renewed phoenix carried its old bones to the City of the Sun in Egypt where they were disposed of with special funeral rites.

That’s the mythological creature, but I was more interested in the symbol of rebirth. When my force was reduced at Coca-Cola and I was “let go,” “fired,” “terminated,” made to feel like shit and like committing suicide there was a process I went through that I think most closely associates whatever grieving process we are consumed with when a loved one dies. The scary part of the preceding statement is really twofold.

First, I’m a nonviolent person, but if I had owned massive stockpiles of weapons I could have been persuaded differently. I was treated with such incredible disrespect and not by the local friends I had developed over the years, although I thought one of them telling me would have been far better than the “HR” person coming in and slinging the severance package at me, but by the HR person from the big company—the person who should have known better, but seemed to take some delight in her repulsive duty. Slinging the severance after she had brought my entire staff in and told them “Rex will be fine. We’re going to take him to Dallas for a bit to do some training, but he’ll be fine.” A week later I wasn’t so fine.

Second, folks don’t think of “layoff” as getting fired. “It’s a business decision” is a refrain you’ll hear from those ignorant of how incredibly personal this personnel action is. It is indeed a business decision, but losing your job so someone somewhere can pocket a bit more cash is perhaps the most crass and personal encounter any of us will ever experience in the workplace. And, if I’m “laid off” I don’t have to wake up early in the morning to go to work, I have no income, I’m looking for a new job, I get to watch a lot of daytime television—this shit feels a lot like being fired.

So, I would advocate we at least use honest language with this process. We don’t have to tell someone being laid off “we’re terminating you,” but we have to quit peddling this nonsense as though it’s somehow the dawn of a new bright and shiny day. Because peddling this stuff in that way is just a big pile of really smelly horse manure.

All of that to say what I try to tell people involved in this process. First, make sure to protect your relationships. Many of us try to Lone Ranger this thing and don’t even take along Tonto. “By gosh we’re going to solve this problem” and we end up pushing away the people who can most help us and provide us the emotional, physical and moral support we need.

Second, I took maybe 24 hours and was really quite irritated with Coca-Cola for all 24 of them. And I still don’t think of the company in the same way as when I worked there. When I worked there I would go to seminars and introduce myself and say “and I work for the greatest soft drink company in the world, Coca-Cola.” At an event one time I did this and a guy from Pepsi introduced himself after I did and he said “and I [emphasis on “I”] work for the GREATEST [heavy emphasis on “GREATEST”] soft drink company in the world Pepsi Co.” Everyone laughed and the facilitator turned back to me “Rex?” “Not a big deal,” I said “they’ve copied everything else we do why expect originality here?” People in the audience were somewhat stunned, but “the cola wars” are incredibly real and incredibly harsh at times. Now, when I talk about the company I more often than not just say “I used to work for the company that produces cavity causing colored sugar water,” which is true and generates huge laughs.

When we get fired for whatever the reason I don’t advocate we continue to promote the company with all our heart and soul, but I do advocate we get moving just as quickly as we reasonably can. 24 hours is plenty long enough to mourn something that didn’t even think we were worth keeping.

Because I was told I was staying throughout the downsizing process I didn’t do anything to prepare. I hadn’t updated my resume, I hadn’t expanded and grown my network, I hadn’t done any continuing education. I had gotten fat, lazy and comfortable. Shame on me.

I vowed never to make that mistake again and I never have. I’ve also put everything I have physically into every job I’ve had since, but I no longer put my entire heart and soul into it. Work is work and when an owner decides to sell, or the economy goes into the toilet, we can hope and pray and wish for the best, but the bottom line (that’s a business term) is that if the new owners need to save a dime, or the former owners need to make another buck, positions (it’s a business decision, so we don’t use “people”) are expendable.

The former owners of the company where I was let go made over $570 million in the transaction. I made really good money. It would have taken me almost 5,000 years to make that much and I've set down with the actuarial tables and studied them...real hard...and I don’t think I'll make it that long.

I pulled my family closer to me. I contacted friends. I called and emailed every contact I could think of (when a company sells, or you get the feeling, or just as a good rule, make sure you have a copy of your contact list that’s stored on your work computer). I let them know I was no longer with this company, I was out there and I was looking. I did this in the first week after having my force reduced.

I also became even more engaged in my community activities. A good friend of mine who runs one of the larger not-for-profits in Lubbock said to me “You, know, if you keep volunteering down here so much, we’re going to have to find an office for you.”

I was at a United Way Board meeting as I didn’t quit going to these either even though I didn’t represent squat any longer. This was a few months after I had been fired and I still wasn’t working. “Rex, I wanted to thank you,” a friend of mine said after the meeting. I smiled. “Thank me. What for?” “Well, a lot of us are facing being laid off and you’ve shown us a different way to respond. You haven’t lost your sense of humor and you’re more engaged than any of us.”

That remains one of the highest compliments I’ve ever been paid. And you know what? I just felt like absolute hell. But I had made a conscious decision to keep moving. One foot in front of the other with a smile on my face, a spring in my step and my head held high and by God we can lose a job, or it can lose us, but we can’t lose our dignity, we can’t lose our sense of self worth and we can’t lose our attitude (unless it was crappy to begin with).

I received 17 phone calls over the course of the months asking me how I was doing and mentioning some potential employment somewhere. None, zero, nada came from my former employer. All came from community contacts except for two that came from family. The job I eventually took came from a phone call from a wonderful friend, a community contact and my next boss.

How important do I think networking is? Almost as important as I think our reaction to being terminated is. The process of rebirth is to pick ourselves up, cry some (for a very little time), dust ourselves off and then get moving down the path to solving the problem of having to find some way to pay for the next meal, the phone bill, the house payment, kids’ school clothes, etc., etc., etc. To sit around and get depressed and watch television and listen to the virtual abyss of ignorance on talk radio is to give away all the power we have to control our future. We get up and get moving—NOW!

That’s why the symbol of the Phoenix. The symbol of rebirth.