They were about to fire me... and I turned it to my benefit

One day I saw a piece of paper on the photocopy machine and I looked at it and it was an org chart. And on that org chart you look for yourself, obviously. And I was the very bottom, the most junior marketer. And it said vacant, where my name should have been. And I realized that I was going to get fired and went home that night and cried, just cried and cried and told my husband, like, that's it, my career's over. No one's ever going to hire me again. Like, I have failed. And he had actually just been let go from Nortel. And we had a baby, a one year old. And so I was also the breadwinner. And I went into work the next day pretending I hadn't seen anything. And I started a job search and ultimately, you know, called all these different places and I had to, like, use the back of Marketing magazine. There's barely any Internet. There's no LinkedIn. No, indeed. You're like calling recruiters, nothing. You know, calling and calling, like waiting for this shoe to drop. And then when I'm just sitting at my desk and this recruiter calls Dana Stewart from management when she calls out of the blue and she asked if I'd be interested in applying for a job at Colgate Palmolive as a brand manager on the Speedstick brand. And I said, yes, I would love to apply for that, thank you. But I'd never heard of her. So I just said, Dana, like, how did you get my information? I never, I don't think I've ever called you or heard of you. And she said, well, I just called the front desk and I asked for the ABM on ketchup and they put me through to you. The crazy thing is there were actually two ABMs on ketchup at the time. Another guy, great guy. She could have easily put Dana through to Daniel. I don't know if she chose me because had a hand in this or because I said hi to her in the mornings. We weren't best friends, but she knew who I was. And that phone call helped me leave Heinz before I was fired. And the day that I left actually was the day of the reorg and I got out unscathed. But I always carried it with me that I had been a failure, that I was supposed to be fired. And I kept that story a secret. Except for my parents and my husband. No one knew that this had happened for 15 years because I was so ashamed of the fact that I was going to be fired. I must have been a terrible marketer. And that Colgate Pomoa must have made an awful mistake in hiring me. Like, what were they thinking? And if they ever found out, they would just toss me on the street.