The Day I Fired My Boss

In 2008, I walked away from a job without knowing how I was going to survive.

At that time, I was working in an organisation as the IT representative for my division. I took care of the computers and technical problems of about one hundred employees. Part of my work required me to liaise with the central IT department that supported several divisions.

The manager of that department was feared by almost everyone. He was verbally abusive, quick to shout, and liked to use vulgar language. If he disliked someone, he would refuse to help them properly. People learned to avoid offending him. The atmosphere around him was tense and intimidating.

I hated working under fear. Every interaction felt like walking through a minefield. Eventually, I decided I could no longer tolerate being terrorised, so I applied for a transfer to another workplace.

I thought I was escaping from hell.

Instead, I jumped from one fire into another.

In the new workplace, the previous manager had been demoted into a supervisor, and the newly appointed manager recruited me. Unfortunately, the demoted supervisor saw me as the new manager’s man. He wanted to get rid of me to spite the manager who had replaced him.

From the very beginning, he made sure my work became difficult.

He instructed his subordinates not to cooperate with me. He refused to guide me properly or provide complete instructions. He set me up for failure. Whenever I made mistakes, he would insult me through email and copy the messages to everyone.

Every morning before work, I felt a tightness in my chest.

Walking into the office felt like walking into a trap. I never knew when the next humiliation would arrive. The people around me were distant and hostile. Nobody wanted to be associated with me. Even the new manager who hired me could not help. He was new himself and depended heavily on the existing staff for support. I could see that he was helpless.

After a few months, I reached my limit.

One day, I walked into the manager’s room holding my resignation letter.

I cannot remember exactly what I said or what he said in return. Stress has a way of erasing details. I only remember the emotional exhaustion. There was a one-month notice period, which meant I still had to continue working there while clearing my leave and waiting for them to find a replacement.

When people learned I was leaving, I sensed quiet celebration around me.

They had succeeded in getting rid of me.

To them, I was the manager’s henchman.

The supervisor ignored me completely. The workers hardly interacted with me. I sat among people yet felt completely alone.

But over time, I began to see my resignation differently.

They did not fire me.

I fired them first.

There was no joy in that workplace. No peace. No dignity. Staying would have slowly destroyed me.

On my final day, I walked out of the building and felt something I had not felt for a very long time.

Freedom.

The suffering was over.

Yet the relief was immediately followed by fear.

I was forty-eight years old. I had no job, no savings, and no connections. My daughter was only six years old, and I was the sole breadwinner of the family. In my mind, I was already too old to be employable.

I had escaped one problem only to enter another.

When I told my wife about resigning, she was quietly worried for me. Still, she supported me and prayed for me.

During that uncertain season, I spent many hours alone at the void deck beneath our HDB block and in the park nearby. I sat there praying and pleading with God.

I asked God to show me how to create an income.

I spent a lot of time reading the newspaper. I loved reading every page carefully, sometimes for an hour at a stretch.

One detail caught my attention.

Small classified advertisements cost about forty-five dollars for only three lines of text. Most had no pictures and no website links. I kept thinking to myself: how could customers possibly make informed decisions from only three lines?

Then an idea came to me.

I began sending SMS messages to advertisers, offering to help promote their businesses online. I told them I could post their advertisements across many online classified portals so their businesses could be found through internet searches.

I was deeply introverted and shy.

I could never bring myself to cold call strangers. Sending text messages was the only method I could manage emotionally.

Every day, I contacted dozens of advertisers.

I kept careful records of who I had already messaged so I would not accidentally contact the same person twice.

Ninety-nine percent ignored me or rejected my offer.

But then I noticed something unusual.

One particular group of people responded far more strongly than anyone else.

Lost pet owners.

When people lost a dog, cat, or bird, they became desperate to spread the news as quickly as possible. They were willing to pay me fifty dollars to broadcast notices across the internet.

I moved quickly.

Within hours, I would submit notices to online forums, classified portals, veterinary clinics, animal shelters, and animal authorities. I designed posters for owners to print and place on notice boards. I monitored online conversations for sightings and immediately notified owners whenever someone reported seeing a missing pet.

My service was fast. And it worked.

More than ninety percent of the missing dogs were eventually recovered. Most pets were found within twenty-four hours. Even the longest searches usually ended within two weeks.

Without planning it, I had created my first self-made job.

As far as I knew, I became the first dedicated online pet finder in Singapore, and perhaps even the first of its kind anywhere in the world, though I only served Singapore.

One case stayed in my memory.

A couple had once lost their dog in Bedok. Despite searching, the dog remained missing for years.

Then one day, years later, another couple contacted me after finding a dog in the same area.

I checked my records and compared the photographs.

The dog looked identical.

I connected both families, and together they confirmed it was the same dog.

What happened next touched me deeply.

The original owners realised the dog had been cared for lovingly by the new family all those years. Instead of fighting to reclaim the dog, they decided to let the new owners keep it.

Everyone found peace.

The original owners finally received closure. The new owners kept the dog they had grown to love. And I felt grateful simply knowing the animal had been safe and well cared for.

Slowly, I began to understand something important.

In the office, I had been treated like a problem.

Outside the office, people appreciated me.

The same qualities that made me uncomfortable in toxic workplace politics became strengths in my new work. I was observant, patient, methodical, and persistent. I noticed details others ignored. I followed up carefully. I genuinely cared.

Leaving that toxic workplace redirected my life.

It led me toward meaningful work that brought joy instead of fear. It brought me closer to my family. I could work from home and spend precious time with my wife and daughter.

What once looked like failure became the doorway to a better life.

Looking back now, if I could speak to the frightened man sitting alone beneath the HDB block in 2008, I would tell him this:

Trust God.

God will show you the way.

The best is yet to come.