...so Sara said:

This is an addendum to the blog I wrote for work last week.

How To: Get Fired After 3 Weeks -

Settle into your job. Be thrown into managing several different channels immediately. Happily accept the challenge. Create three weeks worth of content for all five of them the first day.

Be asked to create proposals for different athletes that your company is trying to take on. Thrive when you are given precise direction. Be told they are “superb.”

It is requested of you (and the rest of the employees) to try and find the “biggest panda they sell on the Internet.” Find the biggest one. It is 8 feet tall. Thrive when you are given precise direction.

Be asked the next week to “step it up” with no other instructions. Be told this position has “high expectations” but never hear any specifics on what those expectations are.

Step it up anyway. Or think you’re stepping it up, rather.

Be instructed to post press releases for ponzi scheme pharmaceutical companies on message boards that haven’t been posted on in 4 years. Become confused. Think: this isn’t exactly social media management. This isn’t even proper SEO. Think: this is spam.

It is spam. Be banned from several message boards for blatantly spamming them.

Be asked to write X number of blogs to be posted around the Internet. Do it immediately. Do it well. Thrive when you are given precise direction.

The next week, be asked once again to “step it up” and “up the ante.” Maybe some other meaningless cliches, too. Ask for specific goals. Be told, “Just work on engagement” and “keep writing on message boards.”

Continue spamming message boards. The more you get banned from, the less you have to post on them, the less you have to waste your time. Continue engaging. Check the statistics inside of the engagement tool you are using. Notice all of the numbers have gone up. Think you finally did something right.

Be called into another meeting the following week. Be told, one last time, that you need to “step it up.” Ask, once last time, for specific goals. Be told, one last time, that you will NEVER be given specific goals and the only goal is to make the fickle clients happy.

The fickle clients will apparently never be happy, and neither will your boss, who won’t talk to you because he is passive aggressive, is trying to make a hierarchy out of a 7 person company, and has someone who is your equal at the company “manage” you.

Manage is a loose term here. There are still no specific goals.

On your way to work one day, pass a poster across the street that strikes you. It reads: What matters most is how well you walk through the fire. Burn bridges to light the way. Take a picture of it and think about it for the rest of the day.

After a final discussion, where the “manager” and “boss” have decided that you can either leave (after three weeks) or “STEP IT UP!!!!1”, you say you will step it up. Continue using the engagement tools. Help get a client who hasn’t paid in months, to pay.

Think you deserve a pat on the back.

Instead, you get a patronizing email recapping every pedestrian “step it up” conversation you have had over the last two weeks. You are given the option to leave. They are trying to pressure you into quitting.

Think about quitting.

Instead, write an email to your boss and your manager asking for specific goals and for the lines of communication to improve. The email, despite your feelings toward those involved, is very respectful.

Receive a very gruff email back. Think about quitting right there and then. Be convinced to grin and go back in the next day and just continue doing what you were doing because there is actually no plausible reason to be fired.

Go in the next day (the day before your birthday) wearing your favorite dress for staff pictures. Work for two hours and then get called in to the conference room by your other boss — the one you should have probably tried to talk to before this all spiraled out of control.

She tells you she respects you and your writing, but it’s just “not working out here.” You agree. She tells you she would be happy to give you a glowing recommendation for any other job. You wonder: what place would take any recommendation from someone who fired you after 3 weeks?

Collect your paycheck and leave.

Watch passive aggressive posts about how much everyone else “LOVES THEIR JOB!!!” pretty much immediately after you’re fired. Think the jerk boss paid them to do it. He probably rewarded them for “not being you” by buying them all lunch and beer after you walked out.

Write a blog about it. Wait a week to post it, as to not seem like a reactionary asshole (like your former boss.) Think about not posting it at all.

Remove them from your resume and post it anyway.