The physics of getting fired

I’d never spoken to him before, and now I never would again. It was the summer of 2001. I was fresh out of university and nine months into my first job as a management consultant in London.

My parents had allowed me to move back into my old room, where I routinely collapsed after getting home from the office well after midnight. Professional life was punishing, but I gave it my all. For a brief time, I felt like I was flying: at my first performance review, I was told I had ‘partner potential’.

But then I got a phone call, telling me that one of the senior American partners wanted to meet me. That was unusual; but then again, I’d been working so hard and getting such good feedback, I figured it couldn’t be anything too bad. I was directed to an office on the first floor, several levels below where I usually sat.

After he fired me, my ears buzzed and my chest tightened; I don’t remember much else, except being told that I shouldn’t even return to my desk. It became apparent that the location of the meeting had been chosen because it would allow me to take a single flight of stairs down to the ground floor. No one would need to see me, and I wouldn’t need to speak to anyone.

The decision felt cruel and unfair. But more than anything, it seemed to violate the laws that for many years had been my way of making sense of the world: the laws of physics. Cause and effect, action and reaction.

What followed was an unlikely journey – one in which the equations I thought I’d left behind at university became, unexpectedly, a companion through the messiest parts of life. Before work, before university, I attended a competitive and prestigious all-boys school in London. While I’ll be forever grateful for the opportunities my education afforded me, life still felt tough for me as a lonely and anxious teenager.