Have You Ever Been Fired? Well These People Have

"From We Got Fired?....And It’s The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Us" by Harvey Mackay.

1. In April 1978 Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank was fired from Handy Dan Home Improvement Center, a chain of 66 stores. The two went on to create Home Depot.

2. Katie Couric was fired from doing on-air work by CNN after the network’s president said he never wanted to see her face on a TV screen again.

3. Walt Disney was fired from his newspaper job for a lack of ideas. From Mickey Mouse to Daffy Duck, his ideas laid the groundwork for one of America’s most creative corporations, the Walt Disney Company (the parent company of ABC News).

4. Burt Reynolds was fired from an acting job and told he couldn’t act. Afterward he became the No. 1 box office draw for five consecutive years.

5. Lee Iacocca was fired from Ford on his 54th birthday after 32 years at the company. He led a struggling Chrysler back from the brink with the help of a loan from the U.S. government, a loan that was paid back in full.

6. Mark Cuban was fired from a computer store because all he wanted to do was sell and work on computers, instead of sweeping the floor like the owner wanted. Today, he is an Internet billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team.

7. David Hasselhoff, the star of “Baywatch,” was fired along with the rest of the cast when the show was canceled after the first season. He believed in the show and bought the show’s rights. It ran for 11 years in 140 countries in 32 different languages.

8. And New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was fired from Salomon Brothers, an investment firm--albeit with a $10 million goodbye-gift.Bloomberg was thirty-nine at the time. He could have stayed history and pounded the beach of Costa del Sol for the rest of his life. Instead, he made history. He founded Bloomberg L.P. and became a billionaire.

9. Joanne Kathleen Rowling, aka J.K. Rowling, was fired from some secretarial jobs because she was found writing creative stories on her computer. She used her severance to write Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone while her daughter took naps. When she ran out of money, she received a grant to finish the book. She’s also a billionaire.

Talk about your silver linings. Lol!

06/03/08 3:11am