Laid Off Before the First Shift: Adoptees Get Fired by Family
Job You Never Applied For
Most people get fired after years of employment. They put in time. They learned the systems. They maybe even got a performance review or two before the axe fell.
Many received severance packages, unemployment benefits, and at the very least, a reason. Budget cuts. Restructuring. A merger. Something.
The newborn gets fired before the first shift. No interview, no training, no warning. The position of “beloved one-of-a-kind child” gets filled by someone else.
Mom signed termination papers before the ink on the birth certificate had dried. Then, adopters hired the baby for a role that came with a new job title, different responsibilities, and a completely altered employee handbook.
Probation Period Never Ends
In the corporate world, new hires get a probation period. They have time to prove themselves. They can ask questions, make mistakes, and learn the company culture. After a few months, they get a performance review and hopefully a permanent position.
The adoptee’s probation period lasts a lifetime. Adopters constantly watch their charge for signs of gratitude, compliance, and proper performance.
Does the child fit the family culture? Do they show enough appreciation for the “opportunity” they were given? If not, they are labeled “difficult,” “ungrateful,” or “angry.” The performance review is always pending, the permanent position always conditional.
Some Skills Do Not Transfer
The adoptee’s original job description was simple: be yourself, the organic offspring of the mother who birthed you. The skills required were basic and came naturally: attachment, trust, a healthy sense of belonging. Neonates learn these skills in the womb, automatically.
The new job came with a vastly different and difficult job description: be the child of strangers. Adapt and pretend and twist yourself in ways that do not come naturally.
The skills require painful contortions: perform gratitude, suppress grief, act happy and content, never ask where you came from. The adoptee’s original skills fail to transfer to the new position.
Exasperated adopters call their acquisitions “uncooperative.” They get frustrated when their adoptee tries to do a job they were not trained for.
Layoff That Shaped Everything
The newborn’s layoff set the course for everything that followed. The adoptee learned to expect being let go without cause. They learned that employers change unexpectedly and shockingly, and this unwanted shift is a permanent condition.
Get MS’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Adoptees learn to look for the workplace exit, even before entering the cubicle. Do not get too attached to a job because careers, just like parents, can instantly disappear.
Every subsequent firing, rejection, and relationship failure is a repeat of the first layoff. The adoptee was laid off from their own family before they could even begin working there and prove their irreplaceable value to the company.
Missing Interview Question
In job interviews, candidates are asked about their employment gaps. “What were you doing during this time?” Adoptees have a similar gap. The first question adoptees always get asked is, “Where were you before you came here?” The answer is always the same: “I was fired.”
The interview was for the position of belonging. The adoptee did not get the job the first time around. Adopters offered a different position, which was usually their own second-choice option, as well.
A much different job title, set of responsibilities, and company culture. Adoptees must take the position because it is the only one offered to them.
Termination Never Ends
The first firing never really ended. Adoptees still carry the termination letter in their body. The startle response is an ongoing performance review. Hypervigilance is a constant monitoring for signs of another rupture. Difficulty trusting is the knowledge that any gig can be eliminated at any time.
They see that the only permanent job is the one you create for yourself. The only reliable employer is the one you hire yourself. The only company that will never lay you off is the one you build from scratch.
Job Not Offered
When they entered the world, the adoptee was never offered a job by the people who should have provided that lifeline, hope, and stability.
Instead, they were reluctantly and hesitatingly hired by others. After their mother signed a termination notice, wary adopters filled out contract-for-hire paperwork. The child showed up and was told to be joyous about a position they never intended to interview for.
Adoptees are always at-will employees. Their position is always a conditional offer. Performing a job that is not designed for them, and spending a lifetime trying to find one that is a better fit for their skills, talents, preferences, and experience.
Being told by others that the job they were fired from was the best job they ever could have had. People whose families kept and nurtured them from the first day of employment.
Most adoptees know better. Being laid off before the first shift, before they ever had a chance to show their worth, indicates that it is not them, it is the system that’s the problem.
Relinquished people know they deserved better. Most are still looking for a job that suits them. A place where they will be fully accepted and embraced, and never heartlessly dismissed without cause.
