My agency went into the hole and it occurred to me I might get laid off. That's when they fired me.

Those two words still make my stomach clench.

"You're fired."

Many of us are unwittingly raised to think life is fair. That if we live by the Golden Rule, somehow we'll be treated right in the end.

Then we get gut-punched by advertising and we go down for the count.

The truth is, you're going to get fired, and maybe more than once.

In advertising, you're only as good as your worst hire, or your bumpiest client meeting. Getting fired was one of the reasons I wrote the Advertising Survival Guide trilogy.

I can't tell you the when or the where of it but I can tell you in all probability you will get fired if you take pride in your work above all else.

You will be taken out at the knees by those who see you as a threat.

A threat to the client relationship. A threat to their cozy little agency culture. A threat because you expect too much and don't back down at the first sign of turbulence. A threat because you continue to push when the going gets tough and capitulation and compromise become the gambit.

Great work is great fucking work.

You might get fired for successfully upgrading an agency's work. Yup, for doing exactly what you were tasked with doing by the goons who hired you -- the ones who couldn't do it themselves to save their own lives.

Wait, what?

Only in advertising is successfully carrying out your mission cause for dismissal.

Maybe you didn't make enough friends along the way. Maybe on your way to improving your agency's reputation, you were too hard on the processes and the people.

Maybe you were too damn demanding of yourself and of others.

Maybe you were expecting too much from advertising people.

You might get fired because you put the work before everything and I do mean everything.

Before culture. Before hand-holding. Before woobie squeezing. Before beer thirties and schmoozing staffers at Happy Hours.

Maybe you didn't play enough patty-cake with your people. Maybe you were too hard on your subordinates in their reviews. Maybe your superiors don't like the way you parted the seas of mediocrity.

Maybe you didn't hand out trophies for fourth place.

Sigh.

Maybe you had the nerve to be blatantly fucking honest and to the point of fault. Maybe you looked people in the eye and told them they needed to be better to get further in the organization. Maybe you hurt their precious feelings or slowed other people's rolls.

Maybe you demanded greater than good and it got old because people didn't want to work that hard.

If you're going to get fired, get fired for pushing.

Maybe you weren't a team player. Maybe you didn't bitch-bond or badmouth your clients along with the rest of the staff. Maybe you didn't play the blame game and point fingers or stay at the office every night rewarding sloppy work habits.

Maybe you trusted the work only, nothing else, and no one else.

if I've learned anything about trusting the work, at least you have something to point at when you get kicked to the curb.

Something that speaks to your own warped priorities and where you drew the line. Something that says you stood for the work and didn't get caught up in the junior high drama even if it cost you a job.

Finally, some fucking good news.

You will survive being fired if you're good at what you do. You will survive if you stay true to the work and stick to being you even if you didn't fit the mold.

Maybe the truth is, getting fired for not fitting the mold isn't a bad outcome.

Welcome to advertising. It's a lot to unpack. It's not always fair but it's a lot of damn fun if you can just learn to let the drama and the arrows bounce off you.

Don't sell yourself short if you're told you don't fit the mold.

The mold has mildew.

Cameron Day has been fired, laid off, and mercilessly shanked. He writes about his experiences, good and not-so-good, in the Advertising Survival Guides, soon to be a completed trilogy. About negotiating a better severance. About the right way to call bullshit. Written from painful, glorious, and his own sometimes humourous experiences. "Chew With Your Mind Open," Stage One, is currently used as a textbook in many ad programs despite its f-bombs. Stage Two, "Spittin' Chiclets" is all about managing the messy middle of your ad career. The final stage, "Sticks & Stones," will launch towards the end of this year. Unless he takes the easy way out and fires himself.

Buy a signed book www.iamcameronday.com