Fired by the Sales Manager on the Day I Found a New Job, Dismissed with a Thousand-Dollar Bill

A while ago, I suddenly recalled an amusing incident that happened during the turbulent period right after graduating from school and entering society, while I was still job hunting.

It was the third job I found after graduating from university, near National Taiwan Normal University, conveniently just one MRT stop away. Like the previous two jobs, it was also a medical engineer position at a medical instrument company.

The first company was mainly responsible for medical instrument repair, located next to Daan Station; the second was research and development of medical products, in the Neihu Technology Park; the third was again instrument maintenance, with the company next to Guting Station. Setting aside the second listed company, the other two were both right next to MRT stations, so it seems companies dealing in medical product agencies make very good money.

I still remember to this day that at the first medical engineer job I found, within a couple of days of joining I discovered the boss sighing all day long, the kind of sighing you could hear across the entire office floor.

On top of that, with only me left as the sole engineer in the whole company, within a few days of joining I was sent to National Taiwan University Hospital to repair large testing instruments. I did not even know where the machine’s repair manual was, and in the end I could only rely on an engineer’s mindset and my own resourcefulness to get the job done.

But that environment was simply too terrifying, so after a month I felt I really could not endure it and submitted my resignation. The reason was that I still had the ability to repair things, but if a more serious error occurred someday, it could cause a system malfunction, lead to abnormal physiological test results, and cause a doctor to take the wrong medical action, which would be irreversible.

But the reason for leaving the third job was not on me. It was because the company’s sales department manager discovered that I could not ride a scooter, and he felt that this meant he could not use me as a delivery boy.

The sales manager even privately called me into the meeting room without notifying the other technical department manager who had hired me or the boss. He was very blunt, saying he felt that since I could not ride a scooter, it would be troublesome in the future to drive around the alleys of Taipei City to deliver goods.

He added that I could stay if I wanted, but I would have to learn to ride a scooter. The problem was that I had not applied for a sales-related position, but rather a simple technical role. In fact, during my interview with the technical department manager, I had specifically confirmed this with him, and he had said that as long as I could drive, that was fine, since moving machines and carrying tools could only rely on a vehicle.

To be honest, I had also learned to ride a scooter during my student days, and could even zip back and forth on the expressway in Hsinchu (which was not yet open at the time; we brought the scooters in and used it as a late-night entertainment playground). But as I practiced, while messing around riding in an S-shape around the roadside reflectors, I lost control and crashed. Since then I decided that a scooter was not suited to my easily distracted way of thinking, and made up my mind to focus solely on practicing driving skills (gazing into the distance).

Now that I had heard the sales manager speak so directly, I thought that since someone considered me unfit for the job, I might as well leave. After all, the medical engineer at this company seemed to only run errands and deliver goods, occasionally going to the hospital to help repair instruments. On top of that, a female colleague at the company looked exactly like a beauty who had once given me a friend-zone card, and having to “stare” at a similar face every day was rather uncomfortable.

The funny part was that when I asked what would happen to that day’s wages, the sales manager stood up directly, pulled a wallet out from behind him, and paid out of his own pocket a one-thousand-dollar bill as severance.

That day I returned to Tamsui, did not even go home, and took that thousand-dollar bill straight to a fairly upscale Japanese restaurant, spending it all in one go.

Since I got the money, I generously patted my bottom and left. It was just a pity that the technical manager who had hired me was still out working, so I could not say goodbye to him; chatting with him had been quite agreeable. Perhaps the sales manager would turn around and tell him and the boss that I had run off on my own, in which case the thousand dollars could be considered hush money.

201811101 Addendum: Now I cannot even remember the name of this company. Searching online, I only found that near Guting Station there was an old address of Niantai Medical Instrument Co., Ltd. (Hengtong Instrument Co., Ltd.) that seems relatively close.