The Day I Got Fired and Thanked My Boss For It

It was a Tuesday morning when I walked into the office, coffee in hand, and a knot in my stomach. I had been working as a marketing manager at a mid-sized agency in Chicago for almost five years. I knew every coffee stain on the carpet, every unspoken rule in the break room, and every passive-aggressive Slack message from my boss, Dana.

The job paid decently, the benefits were good, and the routine was... predictable. Safe. But somewhere between launching digital campaigns for toothpaste brands and pretending to laugh at Dana’s Monday morning “funny stats,” I had lost something important: myself.

The signs were there, I just didn’t want to see them. The missed promotions. The “we need to talk” check-ins. The gut feeling that no matter how hard I worked, I’d never be the kind of employee Dana truly respected—because I didn’t live and breathe KPIs. I breathed something else: creativity, risk, the itch to build something of my own.

But I stayed. Because fear is a persuasive liar.

That Tuesday morning, Dana called me into her office. She had that practiced smile, the kind that HR trains you to wear when you're about to ruin someone’s life. I sat down and watched her carefully fold her hands, like she was delivering bad news to a child who wouldn’t understand.

“We’ve decided to go in a different direction.”

That phrase. That cursed corporate euphemism.

I blinked. “You’re firing me?”

“We’re... restructuring. It’s not personal.”

Except that it was. She had made it personal. I had stopped fitting in the box she wanted me in, and in the marketing world, square pegs get politely shown the door.

I won’t lie. I felt a wave of panic. Bills. Rent. Health insurance. I was single, with no safety net except a dwindling savings account and a side hustle that barely made enough to cover my Spotify subscription.

Dana asked if I had any questions. I wanted to ask if she’d ever fired someone who smiled back and said thank you. But instead, I stood up, shook her hand, and said it anyway.

“Thank you.”

She blinked, clearly confused. “You’re welcome?”

I walked out of the office with a cardboard box of my things and a strange feeling in my chest. It wasn’t despair. It was... relief. I didn’t have to pretend anymore. I didn’t have to shrink myself to fit a job that never loved me back.

For a few weeks, I panicked. Unemployment was a cocktail of freedom and fear. I applied to jobs I didn’t want, out of sheer obligation. But every cover letter I wrote felt like a lie.

Meanwhile, I started putting more time into my side hustle: designing quirky stationery and digital products under a small brand I called Paper Storm. It had started as an Etsy shop during lockdown, a way to stay sane while the world fell apart. But now it became my full-time obsession.

I redesigned the website. I learned about SEO, packaging, customer retention. I watched YouTube videos at 3 a.m. on fulfillment logistics and email marketing. I hand-packed every order with a handwritten note and a sticker that said, “You matter.”

Orders grew from five a week to twenty. Then fifty. Then I had to move inventory from my closet to my living room.

Three months after getting fired, I made more in a single month than I had in my old job.

Six months later, Paper Storm was featured in a BuzzFeed listicle about “small brands that will make your desk 10x cuter.” I hired my first assistant—a college student who loved stickers and needed a part-time job.

One year later, I stood in my own booth at a national stationery expo in New York, watching people stop, smile, and spend money on things I had created with my hands and heart.

I thought about Dana that day. About how she had once said I “wasn’t leadership material.” I smiled.

She was right—just not in the way she thought.

I wasn’t built to lead someone else’s vision. I was meant to lead my own.

Getting fired felt like rejection at first. But it was really a redirection. It was the universe kicking me out of my comfort zone and daring me to build the life I secretly wanted.

I’m not saying everyone should quit their job tomorrow. Not everyone has a side hustle waiting to bloom. But if you’re feeling trapped, misaligned, like you’re slowly becoming a version of yourself that even you don’t like—listen to that voice. It might be your intuition whispering that something better is possible.

Sometimes, the worst thing that happens to you is the best thing that ever could.

So yeah. I got fired.

And I thanked my boss for it.