Introducing...The Shadiest Way To Get Fired From A Writing Job

If you have to get axed you should probably do it while sitting in paradise with a bulletproof contract in your pocket.

How do you like my very first AI-generated image?

Ahh yes…I remember the good old days when blogging had the power to get me fired from a writing job. Please read that again and try to appreciate the irony. Writing got me fired from writing. 😂

There’s a generous lesson (with a side of Jamaican rum and Coke) to be learned here.

I remember the morning as clear as day.

I was sitting on the balcony of a luxury suite at a Sandals resort. Still in pyjamas and sipping a bold cup of Blue Mountain coffee with my travel agent friend. She was at the resort as part of a “fam” trip through her travel agency and I was in Jamaica on a writing contract.

As we sat commiserating over how dreamy our Caribbean mornings were, I opened my laptop and logged into my Dropbox account. What happened next nearly made me spit coffee all over my keyboard and my eyeballs drop out of my face.

Right before my eyes, I watched my work files disappear in real-time from a shared folder. One gone. Then another. And another. Until finally, no files remained. The folder was empty.

As the files were disintegrating an email notification popped up on my screen from the woman who had hired me for this project. It was a termination notice effective immediately due to a story I had published on my blog.

My travel agent friend was reading over my shoulder in complete shock, saying, “Is this bitch for real?”

Part of me was like, “Yaay, now I can spend the next month gallivanting around the island with no work to do.” But another part of me was stunned that my employer took something SO out of context and used it against me.

Here’s the back story and how it all went down…

Months earlier I had received an email via my travel blog from an American woman who had read several of my accommodation reviews. She wanted to hire me for her project.

The job would entail spending eight weeks in Jamaica touring and photographing luxury villas and then writing property listings for her.

She was preparing to launch a luxury villa rental website and needed someone on the ground doing the leg work. Duh, of course I accepted the mission!

While on assignment, she had me living in a villa she was affiliated with. It was a lovely 4 bedroom, 4 bathroom, really comfy place to spend my time. I did most of my writing poolside in the backyard.

It was a very difficult job. 😎

The villa was fully staffed with a housekeeper, groundskeeper, and a chef who doubled as my driver to all the assignment properties.

Not a bad gig, right?

Being in Jamaica on this contract fueled plenty of content for my blog which was centered on Jamaica travel. This assignment was the perfect marriage. I got paid to do her job and outside of work, my blog was reaping the rewards.

After a few weeks of living 24/7 with villa workers, I considered them more as friends than staff and thought it would be interesting to write an article about them.

I called the article “The Help - Jamaican Style,” partly inspired by the movie The Help, which had been released a year prior. If you haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth your while.

The main character in the movie was a writer, I’m a writer. The other main characters were the helpers who lived in wealthy homes and took care of everything to make the lives of their bosses better. The writer wanted to tell the real story behind the help and so did I.

My story was completely subjective and very well written, highlighting the most positive aspects of staying in a fully staffed villa. I wrote about how Jamaica was more than just tropical umbrella drinks, good food, and party life. It was also about getting to know and appreciate the locals who work tirelessly to enhance the tourism experience.

Although the story was written from a positive angle, I made sure to mention that villa staff work very long hours and are expected to cater to guest needs around the clock, for very little pay. I witnessed it firsthand when my villa had a group of paying guests come in for a week.

I watched the chef have to whip up food at 2 AM for drunk, belligerent guests when they’d come back from a night out. I heard disorderly conduct well into the wee hours when villa staff should have been sleeping so they could greet everyone with breakfast and a smile in the morning. I watched demand after demand at every hour of the day and night.

I get it. Guests pay good money to be on vacation. But it was a real eye-opening glimpse into the lives of the staff.

Anyway, back to my firing.

The woman who fired me said that my blog article was highly inappropriate, EVEN THOUGH her villa was never named nor photographed. The staff remained anonymous and the story was written as generally as possible.

The only person who knew which villa I was referring to was HER. In the grand scheme of things, I could have been writing about any vacation home. They’re all the same.

I wondered if my story had just made her feel guilty somehow because there was no other reason to fire me for writing a story that had nothing to do with her business.

Lessons I learned from getting fired:

1. If you’re employed as a writer on a contract basis, make sure your contract is bulletproof. Mine wasn’t good enough. It didn’t contain an early termination clause, so I only got paid for the few weeks I actually did the work.

2. Make sure you understand who holds the copyright to your work and back that shit up! Thank goodness I had backups of all my work outside of Dropbox. I had no use for the property listings I wrote but I definitely wanted to keep all my photos as personal proof that I gained entry into villas with helicopter pads! When would that ever happen again?

3. You can never know how people will interpret your personal work. Even though I wrote the story on my own web space, employers can and will watch your social media. Consider yourself informed.

   

In the end, her website never did launch. Believe me, I watched for it for many months after this incident.

I felt good about the fact that she cut off her nose to spite her face and it was a #FAIL for her. She’d hired the most qualified person and then fired me without real cause, but only she failed in the end.

Although it hurt a little, I decided to spend the remaining contract weeks in Jamaica on my own dime. Not a huge loss for me and one helluva story and lesson for you.

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In the world of freelancing, we are constantly subjected to terms we either may not like, may not agree with, or may not even be aware of.

If you’ve done freelance work in the past, have you run into any super shady dealings? Have you ever been fired? How did it all shake out for you? Drop your comments below.

Through our shared experiences maybe we can save the world, one freelancer at a time!