And the question is: Who should really be fired?

OK. So the man is getting $33-million dollars and sure, that’s something.

Good for him. His future might be up in the air, just like the George Clooney (movie) laid-offs. But at least he has the means to plant his feet back on the ground. (See back story here.)

And Conan’s staff at the Tonight show are getting a $12-million pay-off. It’s good to know that.

But — is that enough? What about the powers who made the wacko decision to move Jay Leno to the 10 p.m. slot (apparently in part to save NBC a fortune by replacing “real” shows that cost big bucks with a talk show that cost far less).

But who the hell wanted to watch Leno at 10 p.m.?

Who the hell wanted to watch Leno at all — feting Rush Limbaugh  — and doing silly Dodgem Car antics with otherwise intelligent people?

So anyway, Conan O’Brien has been forced out of his role of Tonight Show host after less than eight months.

From March 1, Jay Leno will be back doing the job he did for 17 years before moving to the 10 o’clock slot. And, well, who the hell was ever going to watch him — or any talk show — at 10 p.m.?

The idea was daft.

And how the hell can someone who has done a job for 17 years want to go back to it? Which is another question altogether and not the subject of this blog.

So, Conan’s fired. History.

He’ll no doubt rise like the Phoenix.

He deserves to laugh all the way to the bank for what I hope he doesn’t see as a public humiliation. (He looks like a pretty intense bugger and I don’t believe being fired is easy for anyone.)

But what about the person at the top who fucked up? Who turned Conan into a pawn? Who was there pulling the strings? Who moved him around? Who set him — and Leno — up for failure?

Whose bright money-saving idea was the Tonight Show switch? Who is the irresponsible A-Hole who decided on the strategy in the first place?

Because I’d like to see him go. And sans $33-million. Sans $1-million. Sans a single cent.

It strikes me that this whole to-do is a large-scale and very public manifestation of the way companies in the United States hire people and fire people. It totally dovetails with the at-will
system that operates in this country. (See my link: You’re fired! And — is the ‘at will’ clause the cause of the bad boss syndrome?)

As I say there:

In the United States, it is not necessary to be a good boss. You can, in fact, be a terrible boss. This is because the general practice is that, at any time, you can summon anyone on your staff and say: “You’re fired.” No cause needed. No reason. Just be sure they can’t prove ageism, sexism, racism or something as direct as that, and you’re protected.

(You must know? The employer is free to discharge individuals “for good cause, or bad cause, or no cause at all.” Click on this Nolo link for the full scoop and to learn that, except in the state of Montana, if you are employed at will, your employer does not need good cause to fire you.)

When I was going to hire a senior editor on a publication and was concerned that while he was a good writer, he might not be a good senior editor, my boss said, “Well, you can just fire him.”

Earlier, when I accepted the job there, someone said to me: “Do you know, he hires people — and as quickly, fires them?”

At the time, I’d lost jobs — because a nonprofit folded in one case and because a magazine closed down in another.

But I was new to the “Up in The Air” phenomenon. And let me say, Clooney and company (namely, the writer) do a great job showing firing like it is, by which I mean: No joke.

Day after day I hear stories of bad bosses. And why should you be a good boss, as in communicating well, relating to staff, incorporate principled leadership practices (check out Stanford School of Business dean Garth Saloner talking about principled leadership here), when you can just fire someone on a whim?

This very week a friend who is doing the job of four creative directors for a magazine group where she gets paid less than she should if there was only one magazine: “These bosses on the surface are friendly and smiley. But they cannot say what they want. It’s all about ‘Just do it,” then, ‘This is not what we want (moron).’ Very tricky to work with.”

But she’s hanging onto her job, for now. Because if there is one job worse than a really bad job, it’s looking for a new job.

Go, Conan! And good luck.

If you want support getting the employment laws changed in the United States in the interest of making companies and bosses responsible and accountable, give me a buzz.

AT SF Moma yesterday, on the Fourth Floor, listening to museum curator Gary Garrels tell us about the art in the Focus on Artists exhibition. He mentions that at some point, he returned to SF MOMA (from where, I don’t know, and the back story is not of consequence to where my thinking went — but inexcusable not to google the scoop).

Anyway, he had returned to SF Moma, and why he returned, he says, was because of “the collection,” meaning the art collection. And he talks with passion about some of the artists, like Clyfford Still.

And he says, to explain his return and his passion, that “The collection becomes an extension of who you are.”

And, he says, “It’s like your children.”

And this gets me thinking about my “You Are Not Your Job” blog.

And yes, I know there there is a difference between a job and a passion.

And I know that when your job is your passion, then you are your job, and you want to be your job.

So, there are the people who stay in “jobs” they don’t especially like, or have become accustomed to tolerating,

• because they’re afraid to move,
• or tell themselves stories about why they can’t move,
• or don’t even think of moving from despite, or because of, all of the above, if you really got down to it,
• and yes, I think that there are people who don’t have choice, as in people from low socio-economic backgrounds, without an education, and who haven’t been brought up with choice as part of the conversation,
• and there are many people who stick in untenable or at least lackluster situations because they lack self-confidence. And so on and so forth.
  

But when what you do reflects your values and is your life’s work, then it’s not “a job.” And yet, if you work for someone else, you are still vulnerable to being downsized, or fired, right?

So there is the “you are your job,” as in your job gives you your identity and you don’t develop a life outside of it. And you go to work each day and the people at the company are, perhaps, your family; and your work is the center of your life because it’s what you put your focus on, and so on and so forth, and I don’t mean to be glib here.

And then there is “you are your job,” because it aligns with your values and it reflects what’s important to you, and what you want to study, and what you want to share, and the difference you want to be and make, and so forth.

And either way, my question is — if you are an employee, don’t you still need to address your own life, and not just live through what you do? I would say, yes.

You get fired, for whatever reason and downsizing is a good one, or you need to retire because you reach that age, and even if you can still read about your passion and be vicariously involved, or peripherally involved, you lose the power of position and the associates and control and life direction that comes with it.

So indeed, it is where one wants to be and what one wants to be doing in a job, but — there is still the whole person and the whole life.

I don’t know Gary Garrels or anything about him. He just happened to spark the stream that resulted in these thoughts. Part of an ongoing conversation.

Harriet, center, with fellow journalists and a kiwi bird in New Zealand.

Continued from Part 3 of When resigning is harder than getting the boot.

Baskas is well aware there are a lot of people working jobs they hate — and that common for people to be have their identity so invested in their job that they stay there.

“I know some people don’t have choice. But many, I think, have more choice than they think.”

What would she advise someone not happy in a job and thinking of leaving to freelance or run their own business?

“I’d tell people to stretch their day. Start doing what it is you love. Moonlight a bit, even if you’re up all the time. If you love it and want to explore it as an option, try doing it.

“I know people who have used vacation time to try out other jobs.”

And sometimes it takes losing it and then the person goes and gets a certificate, for example; and becomes a teacher [for instance]; and then they’re really happy and wish they’d done it sooner.

Her husband loves radio. When she left her job, he was in management.

And he stepped back down. “Sometimes you give up a little bit of money and get back happiness.

“You give up earning that extra $10 000, make a change to live on that much less, and live happier.”

Her identity now?

“I’m a writer, a radio producer and a creative person who manages my own business. And I can be very supportive of the person who took my job. Every time he calls for advice, I say ‘better you than me’.”

These days, among other things, Baskas writes her personal blog / column stuck at the airport “for my own entertainment;” she is the well-mannered traveler at MSNBC and she writes a monthly “at the airport” column for USA Today.

Onward and upward! How did you cope with job loss?

Harriet, center, with fellow journalists and a kiwi bird in New Zealand.

Continued from Part 2 of When resigning is harder than getting the boot.

Shifting gears — and the Big Question plus the answer that directed her new career.

“After I finished the one big deadline project I had when I left the radio station, I sat down and thought: ‘If I didn’t have to work, what would I do?’ I did the fantasy thing.”

What she came up with was this:

“I would go to museums and do radio stories about things that museums never show you.

“I wrote a grant [to do this] and got it.” A grant to do 24 such stories. “It took me two years.”

What she did was give herself permission to pursue her wish list.

“And I’m very lucky. That thing about ‘follow your bliss’ worked for me.

These days, Baskas writes about airports as well as the museums.

“I sometimes think, when I don’t have enough work, that I should get a regular job.”

But she doesn’t let herself get stuck there. “It would be too life consuming and I’m more selfish about having my life now,” she says.

“You get so tied up in a job, you don’t do other things. A regular job can be incredibly limiting. I know it happened to me.

“I didn’t leave time for my family. My husband and I were both working all the time. We were both coming home complaining about the irritations of our work.”

Shortly after she left her job, her husband made a switch in his job.

“We both switched to things we liked doing better and had to find new things to talk about. More pleasant stories.”

Please continue to Part 4 of When resigning is harder than getting the boot.

Harriet, center, with fellow journalists and a kiwi bird in New Zealand.

Continued from Part 1 of When Resigning is harder than getting the boot.

Baskas says it took her a year to leave. “It was hard,” she remembers.

Looking back, she says she can see that she was afraid to walk away.

What nagged her was: “If I don’t have that structure, the title and the authority, then what do I have?”

My identity was “Hi, my name is Harriet, I’m the manager of [the radio station] and the person would say, ‘Oh, I listen to that radio station.’ [Your job is] how you introduce yourself.

“Like, what am I? I’m a wife, I’m this, I’m that, and I’m the manager of this station.

“If I let that go, was there going to be enough to fill that big space in my income and my identity?”

She had some projects lined up and knew that financially she would be OK.

For health benefits, her husband was her cushion. “But that in itself was an identity issue. I had never relied on someone for something like that.”

It took about a year until finally, she was ready to walk away. On the plus side, “Taking that time was a good thing in that I made a plan for the next manager so he could step in easily.”

And soon as she left, the question of who she was resolved itself.

“It quickly became pretty clear than managing my own new life and career was as big a responsibility and job as what I’d left.”

Baskas had a couple of transition projects that would be challenging and take up time.

What has stayed with her is the fact that, “I left and — do you know? — I forgot my phone number within 24 hours. I had to go and look it up.

“That made me realize the door was closed. I was more ready to leave than I knew.”

Please continue to Part 3 of When resigning is harder than getting the boot.

Harriet, center, with fellow journalists and a kiwi bird in New Zealand.

Choosing to leave your job can be tough when it’s who you are and not simply what you do.

I met Seattle–based journalist Harriet Baskas in New Zealand. The pair of us, along with four other journos, were invited guests on a media trip covering an Air New Zealand promo (see Sex, Social Media and New Zealand — Part 1).

Sitting swopping stories in the back seat of our mini-bus during one of our jaunts around North Island with our Air New Zealand and tourism New Zealand hosts, Baskas — when I told her that “you are not your job” was the title of one of my blogs (among other things, Baskas blogs on being stuck at the airport) — told me about her personal confrontation with “you are not your job” syndrome.

It happened when she wanted to transition from full-time employment to freelancer some years ago.
At the time, Baskas was general manager running a radio station licensed to a community college in Bellevue, Washington. “I was the one salaried staff member, working with about 120 volunteers,” she says.

She had taken over a flailing radio station at a time the college was thinking of giving up on the license and closing it down.

Nearly a dozen years later, “it was thriving and successful in the sense that it was operating effectively and growing. It wasn’t an NPR, but it was stable and respected in the community,” she says.

“I’d built and fixed radio stations before that one,” she continues.

“What I’m good at is projects. But my work was done in terms of the personally challenging part.”
She was doing some freelance writing and some producing outside of her job at the station. “And I was getting cranky and irritated with the day-to-day things.

“I knew it was time to go.”

Then she discovered a hard truth. “I realized I was scared to walk away,” she says.

Number one, from the benefits.

“It had been my first job with benefits and I was enjoying that.”

And number two, “the identity thing.”

“If I wasn’t the boss of a place, the manager of that radio station, what would it mean to me?”

Please continue to Part 2 of When resigning is harder than getting the boot.

A friend — I’ll call her Suzie (and more about people not wanting their names used around lay-offs in a future post) — fell victim to a recent round of layoffs in San Francisco.

I say victim, but she felt less victimized after she left than when she worked there.

Why?

Simply put, she was not her job. She had a sustainable life. She had balance.

The major part of her life that was not working — although she was too up-close-and-involved at the time to see the effect this was having — was the work part.

Even though she was not her job, her relationship with her job was clouding the rest of her life.

Keep reading and you’ll get it.

On the work front, Suzie was:

1. Bored by her job.

For many, a layoff is a blessing, even when it’s a shock. It can give you the kick in the ass you need when you’re stuck, but not doing what’s required to get unstuck, which generally involves:

• Getting a resume together and starting the hunt for a new job, which as any of us who have worked full-time know, is time-consuming, and the last thing you feel like doing at the end of a long day, especially when you don’t like your current job, which is a debilitating and tired-making place to be; or
• Jumping ship without the anchor of a new job, the prospect of which freezes many into inactivity; or
• Doing what it takes to become self-employed.

2. Suzie couldn’t stand her boss. They’d had a series of confrontations. Suzie had told me stories of her bossy boss; how when she (Suzie) tried to question or discuss things, she (the bossy boss) got irritated and antsy. “It’s like I shouldn’t have opinions or like I’m questioning her authority,” Suzie told me. Several times. “So I just shut up,” she added.

Bad relationship. Passive-aggressive. Walking on egg-shells. Hey, and this was her fucking boss; not her boyfriend.

“Is she from this country?” I asked first time Suzie told me about her work situation, meaning, was her boss from the USA. And sure enough, she was.

Now, I was not born in the USA. And I have not always worked in the USA. But I have worked for a long time in the USA.

And I have a theory about bosses in the USA.

Namely, bosses in the USA are protected by the “at will” clause of US labor law.

If you’re a good boss, then lucky staff, and I’m sure there are a few.

I must have met a couple — and maybe even worked for one or two. Let me think about that …

But — a theory started to make sense to me, thinking about Suzie, and bosses I’ve had, and the number of times I’ve heard people give examples of the bizarre behavior of their  bosses, past and present.

I reckon the “at will” clause was conceptualized, and put into place, by a lousy boss, or several lousy bosses.

In the United States, you are not required to be a good boss. You can, in fact, be a terrible boss. This is because the general practice is that, at any time, you can summon anyone on your staff and say: “You’re fired.” No cause needed. No reason. Just be sure they can’t prove ageism, sexism, racism or something as direct as that, and you’re protected.

(You must know? The employer is free to discharge individuals “for good cause, or bad cause, or no cause at all.” Click on this Nolo link for the full scoop and to learn that, except in the state of Montana, if you are employed at will, your employer does not need good cause to fire you.)

When I was going to hire a senior editor on a publication and was concerned that while he was a good writer, he might not be a good senior editor, my boss said, “Well, you can just fire him.”

More on bad bosses — and this boss of mine — later.

But needless to say, the way things work, with the boss Suzie had, she was caught by the short hairs.

3. Back to Suzie’s termination: She was bored by her job and she had a godawful boss.

On top of this, while she liked the focus of her work in that she handled environmental issues for the city, and while sustainability was a value and where she wanted to be working, given the constraints imposed by the bossy boss, (which were contributing to her boredom), she knew she was making less of a difference and having less of an impact than she wanted.

A direct result of my first firing is that I moved to the other side of the world. This is quite a mind blast, if I think about it rationally, which I confess I don’t very often.

The thing is, I find it difficult to get to grips with the fact that I gave up a home in which I could, and often did, sit in and think, “I love this place and everything in it,” from the fabrics I’d chose for the curtains that I’d made, to the paint colors I’d put on the walls because they made me feel good, to the original art I’d collected, each piece with a story and most of which make me laugh, or at least smile, and so on and so forth. I could carry on for several pages.

I didn’t like that my apartment was on the first floor and I didn’t have a view. This was the single shortcoming.

And I didn’t like that I couldn’t find another project in South Africa that both grabbed me and wanted me. (Hey, am I talking about finding a job or finding a relationship? Or do they both work the same way?)

There were reasons beyond the firing, but it was the linchpin that got me on an Air France plane to Paris, from where I connected to London; then on to Huston, could it have been, for customs? — and then San Francisco. I had a one-year return ticket — and no idea I would not use it to return.

But getting back to that first layoff, from the nonprofit.

There were some powerful learnings that live with me still.

For example, take the young woman I’ll call Glenda.

I don’t know, now that I think about it, what her background was in terms of where she’d worked before. I can tell you she was short, and chubby in a Rubenesque sort of way, and she was married to a dorky newspaper editor, and she had a couple of kids.

And when we were laid off, I realized that she was not just losing her job. She was losing her identity.
Her job was who she was. Nothing else in her life, I saw as her self-confident bossy-boots persona dropped away, had significance, if she could not lay claim to her job.

In her case, desperation fueled her. Her need for a calling card (there was no financial need) propelled her into action and she was instrumental in scrambling together a new little org that limped along, for a while, from the dregs of the old.

I thought of Glenda last week.

I was doing a Saturday social media workshop in the journalism department at the University of California, Berkeley. I was talking to a woman whose dad had worked for 35 years — or maybe 40 — at the San Francisco Chronicle.

And then he retired.

Not out of choice, but because he’d reached retirement age.

She told us how, after leaving, all her dad had wanted to do was to go back to work. At the Chronicle.
And she told us how, not having this option, he was dead within two years.

Now, she said, she was worried about her mother, who was due to retire.

She said she was trying to get her mother to prepare for retirement with words like, “Imagine, you’ll be able to relax and do nothing.”

I had to bite my tongue when I heard that one. (She wasn’t asking for opinions or ideas.)

Her story woke me up to the fact that retirement can be the equivalent of a layoff.

If you are you job (OK — now you get the idea behind the title of this blog), then losing your job is like, well, losing yourself.

Live crab for sale at Princeton — on a good-weather day.

A foghorn’s haunting call. A person — this is amazing to watch — skidding across the water, way out back beyond the lines of tied up boats, but inside the Princeton harbor wall. The zipping figure is kite-boarding.

And there’s a second person, on a sailboard.

The kiteboard’s sail is a bulging splash of red and white, the kite filled with the wind I was hearing, from under the bed covers, via the rain that has been blowing against the windows for an age now.

It’s crab season and this is crab harbor over here in Princeton, near Half Moon Bay. But the boats aren’t out in the gusts and the rain, which is in fact much lighter than last night. The waves are pretty nondescript across at the base of the cliff to my right that is the famed Maverick’s surf spot.

I wonder if they’ll have the big wave contest this season, which extends into the New Year. I know they missed a good run over Thanksgiving ….

But meanwhile, there goes another kite-boarder, his or her kite a fleeing splash of yellow, red and white on a blustery gray stretch of sea.

And don’t forget the occasional seagull, sometimes several in a group, doing the seagull swoop. And everything that can billow is billowing, from the canvas on the boats to the coverings on two motorcycles in the harbor carpark.

This hotel I’m overnighting at has its computer desk in a window nook. The view is not what compelled me to get out of bed and sign in with the free WiFi, and write. The view, however, could keep me writing all day.

But, sigh, I don’t have all day here.

What got me to my keyboard was remembering the conversation with the bartender downstairs last night. The medium-rare Creekstone Farm Black Angus New York steak sandwich on sourdough with golden fries and yes, he remembered to bring the mayo, and a garlicky green salad, were all good. The Princeton cocktail — Bombay, Cointreau, lime juice, cranberry juice and a twist of lemon in a martini glass — was the type of cocktail that you could keep drinking for the flavor and get blind drunk, if you were not thinking of your friend who was handcuffed and taken directly to jail for a DUI exactly seven days ago.

For brunch it's a blackened shrimp salad in the bar.

The bartender could mix a mean drink. And he was friendly; in fact the only person at the bar who returned my smile and who was willing to engage in conversation.

He was conversing with everyone, in fact. And the subject everyone knew about was his Thanksgiving dinner. His lousy Thanksgiving dinner. His awful Thanksgiving. His nightmare Thanksgiving day.

“What was so bad about your Thanksgiving?” I finally ask.

He hesitates. Then comes and leans on the bar, close to me, and explains:

How he spent five hours in the kitchen and did a gazillion things to his turkey; and his his parents were invited; and they arrived along with god alone who else; and he had 35 minutes left to do the last-minute things; and his girlfriend couldn’t handle being ignored; and she’d sulked; and she was Japanese; and she had no family here; and she was only 26 and his previous girlfriend had been almost twice his age, divorced, with children, and never sulked; but this one — he’d been living with her for three months; and she wasn’t working; and he was working three jobs — real estate, and this job at the bar, and I forget the third. No, it wasn’t bootlegging for Moss Beach Distillery down the road.

And then he tells me —  sure I’ll understand and be on his side — that he let the girlfriend go crying off into a friendless Thanksgiving afternoon (or evening); that she had to get things together; and learn how to handle herself; and on and on; and meanwhile, he’d ended up with two things to eat from his whole Thanksgiving table as the guests had devoured the rest while he was dealing with her. (Do your planning better, babe, is what I want to suggest. But he doesn’t ask me.)

Because now, I’m no longer liking this formerly friendly bartender. In fact, I’m thinking, what a moron — what a guy; what an A-hole.

And when he tells me he’s (magnanimously) taken her back (She went back?!), all I can think is, she needs her head read, and why doesn’t she leave the motherfucker?

And I wish I could meet her, and coach her, and then she’d leave the motherfucker …

Which thought causes me I remember: I’m a coach. Breathe, baby.

The thing is, at 26 and perhaps even at 36, I could have felt like that Japanese girl. The sense of abandonment. I can identify. Being left to his family of wolves; probably benign ones, but knowing that wouldn’t have helped.

A Princeton Harbor gull.

I seriously want to shake that bartender and say: “Learn to communicate, bugger. Wake up. Stop whinging. YOU MADE IT HAPPEN.”

Is that harsh?

I mean, I like men. A lot. And I like a lot of women. And — don’t we manage to make our own lives miserable?

Yum-Yum relationship matters:

What if he’d sat her down and said: “What do you want from me?”

And listened for her needs. And then made his requests of her. And if they’d made a pact. Designed an alliance. Reached an agreement. Ahead of time.

And Yum-Yum work matters:

What was all that anger around those three jobs?

OK. Let it go. That’s all for now. Won’t it be nice to go out and walk in that wind and feel the elements I’m protected from, sitting here in my little nook looking out and feeling so enamored by this view, and being here, with the foghorn still calling, beside the seaside.

We were given the boot around noon.

It came as a shock.

Does this happen to you? At times in my life when something unexpected occurs that I haven’t confronted before, it’s like I watch as my mind begins a search. I become a spectator as it runs through scenarios and offer me options.

In a sense it’s like my brain, off its own bat, starts devising a multiple choice questionnaire, in effect saying: “Come on. You don’t know how to deal with this one. You don’t know how to think. You don’t know what to do. But I’m giving you choices. Which one of them are you going to settle on?”

It happened the time I looked under an ex-husband’s pillow — we’d been living in different towns for a couple of years when I paid the surprise visit — and found a woman’s nightie.

A very drab nighty, I might add. This was was reassuring. My brain went to: “He’s cheating on you with a frump.”

Then it went to: “This must be a long-time and comfortable relationship.”

Then it went to: “She must be a frump anyway. I mean, who would wear that thing?”

As I noted the thoughts on that occasion, I also noted my lack of emotion. Like, “He’s having an affair. And so what?”

But then came the thought: “That’s wrong. It can’t be ‘so what.’ You’re supposed to feel something. You’re supposed to do something. You’re supposed to react.”

And then I watched my brain search through the blankness for How. It went to movie scenes; then to books; then to TV shows; like it was looking for inspiration.

I watched it pick up snippets of scenarios, and drop them.

And then came the idea that I should dive into a mini hysteria because, really, I wanted a divorce. Yes. Here was a perfect reason. I could blame him. I could be righteous.

The scary thing is, I’ve noticed that once the choice is made, the mind globs on, perspective goes Poof!, and what follows takes on a life of its own.

I watched the whole process happen with my ex, as if in slow motion. It seemed to take a long time. In fact, I know it took only a few seconds.

And it was only very much later, long after the marriage had ended, and after the emotion of ending it had faded, and after I’d come to identify with that bumper sticker “Don’t believe everything you think” through tortuous long hours spent in meditation, that I was able to look back and clearly identify the steps.

How this relates to the firing is: We were fired and I knew it was dramatic. I watched people around me begin to react. I knew that I would need to react.

But — I had a lunch appointment.

And not just any lunch appointment.

I was due, in an hour, to speak to a group of businessmen.

What I was due to speak to them about was the amazing work the incredible organization I’d just been fired from had been doing, was currently doing, and would be doing in the future.

I was going to tell them about our mission and our successes and our focus and our plans.

I knew the ropes.

In the weeks I’d been there, I’d set up appointments and gone with the director and his sidekick to the offices of all the editors who’d become friends during my years as a journalist.

Some of the personal dynamics at the nonprofit had surprised me. Like the musical beds. Who the hell was the man huff-puffing and the woman with the shrill “Don’t stop, Don’t stop” as a bed thump, thump, thumped against the wall from the next door room for half the night when we were on a weekend staff retreat discussing strategy and a new name for the organization (that in fact had not been renamed The Peace Foundation, as I’d been told it had)? And what about the ex-wife who popped into my office almost daily to lay claim to her ex-husband, who everyone knew was screwing his secretary?

But these were not the topic of my speaking engagement.

Rather, my stockbroker, a friend, had asked me to come and speak to his luncheon group about serious matters. And it had been no ordinary request. At least for him.

The institution he’d invited me to speak at, and which he’d recently been accepted into, was the old Durban Club. It would, one day many years later, be purchased and owned by a black South African woman.

But at the time, it had a men-only membership and, at the time, women still had to enter through a side door. Or maybe that part of it had just changed.

Why had I said yes, given the sexist nature of the place?

Because it was a friend who had asked me. And, much as I hated to speak in public and felt enormously inclined to say no, my job was to communicate the message of my organization.

My friend, I knew, was eager to make a good impression. For some reason, he had decided to bank on me giving it a tweak.

When he’d asked me if I’d do it, about two months ahead of the day, he’d harped on — and on: “You have to do it if you say you will.

“You can’t bail out.

“This is important.

“They only have one speaker a month.

“You will definitely come, won’t you?”

And on and on he went, through several follow-up calls during subsequent weeks.

I could hear his voice in my head as I sat at my desk thinking: “I’ve just been fired. We’ve all just been fired.”

What was I going to do?

OK.

So I went to the lunch. And I spoke to the group. And I told them exactly what I had planned to tell them.

I put what had just happened out of my mind, just like it never had.

I felt like two people. One went through the motions. The other watched.

After it was all over, I walked back to the suite of offices, feeling shell-shocked and not a little stunned.

To this day, when I think about it, I feel embarrassed and uncomfortable.

To this day, I wonder what I should have done.

I think, had I been confident and a good speaker, I would have told the full and real story. But we’d been told not to go public with the firings.

So, would I have snitched? Should I have snitched?

And with whom should my loyalty have been?

Should I have canceled at the last moment and not gone to the lunch?

Amazing how things we do can live on. When I think about it, this comes alive for me like it happened last week.

I wish I had gone and told the truth.

The next day, our firings made front page headlines in The Daily News.

Ironically, while I had kept mum, the organization’s director blamed me for leaking the news to the Press. He and his sidekick were peed off. I was the bad guy.

Was I the bad guy?

Firings are complex things, as I say. Unexpected things happen. Life goes on.

Is anybody left unscathed?