Last Thursday, my best friend at work got fired.
I found out first thing Friday morning. He was a scrub tech at my hospital, and we’d worked together for over ten years. We did hundreds of robotic cases together. We developed a slew of new techniques and new ways of doing things together. He wasn’t one to sit back and pass instruments. He was involved and an integral part of every case. We’d always be looking for ways to do things faster or better or smarter. Having him on my team challenged me to better. We got a kick out of challenging each other.
We had such a great team that he’d often comment that we would do three robotic cases in a day and not once say a word about the surgery. The nurse, the surgeon, the tech, and the PA had done it so many times together that we just moved through the day talking about our kids and our weekend plans, all the while working seamlessly together.
He was a smart, hard-working and diligent human.
One day, I was called into a partial nephrectomy. A case I had never done before with a surgeon I had never worked with before. The surgeon cut into an aberrant kidney artery and the patient’s hemoglobin dropped to around four. After the case, my buddy and our nurse joked that I was whiter than the patient. It was probably the only time I’ve been terrified in the OR. If my buddy hadn’t been my tech, that patient would have been in a world of trouble. He kept putting instruments in my hands and telling me what to do as the surgeon sat across the room at the robotic console.
Why did he get fired?
My buddy is the kind of guy who will tell it to you exactly how it is. He doesn’t care who you are or how uncomfortable it makes everyone in the room. He goes right after it. He points out stupidity and hypocrisy without a second thought. He is outspoken and very opinionated. Not everyone appreciates that.
One of the last times I worked with him, our surgeon had put on an extra case and when she came through the door he said something something like, “What, are you and your husband not getting along?”
That’s who he is. Some people couldn’t stand him, but he was right 99.9% of the time and he backed up his opinions with hard work.
Last week, he was in a meeting with administration about the direction of the scrub techs and the OR techs at our hospital. Apparently, it didn’t go well, and he was asked to empty out his locker after that meeting.
I was devastated when I heard.
I reached out to him to see if he wanted to someone to talk to, and we met up at a local bar near his house on Friday.
By the time we got together, he told me he had had 14 job offers. He showed me his phone history and I knew half the names. While we talked and drank, he received two more calls about setting up interviews and possible job openings. He also had calls from the Chief of Surgery and the Chief of OB/GYN.
By the time I left, I realized that getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to this guy. He’s going to be twice as happy making twice as much money and doing so much more for the world than what he was doing.
I was listening to Jim Rohn yesterday and I heard him say…
“Some people say, ‘I’ll really get after once I get a good job. I’m not gonna bother for this crummy job.’”
No no no. That isn’t how it works. That’s backwards. You don’t get the good job until you really get after it.
My friend went after his crummy job everyday. He busted his butt and worked very hard. He knew more about surgery than anyone I know. He trained more people than anyone I know. He worked more overtime than anyone I know, and his reward is going to be in the next job. His reward is coming because he got after it at a crummy job.
He’s not looking through the paper for jobs. He’s not looking at job boards. He’s not interviewing in competition with ANYONE else.
I know you think that doesn’t apply to you, but I promise you it does. Even if you have no experience. I go into it in great detail in the the Dream Job Package. How to make yourself stand out. Of course, you don’t have the network or the experience that my friend does, but you’ve got a lot more than you think.
Let me show you:
Brian Wallace