The term ‘fired’ is a colloquial expression for dismissing a person from employment. It became more popular as a result of the NBC reality show The Apprentice where the host, American businessman Donald Trump, eliminates contestants for a high-level management job by “firing” them successively. In 2004, Trump actually filed a trademark application for the catchphrase “You’re fired!”

Some sources suggest the expression may have originated from the verb “to fire,” as in “to discharge a gun.” However, legend has it that the phrase originated in the 1910s at the National Cash Register (NCR) Company.

NCR founder John Henry Patterson (1844—1922) is widely recognized as the pioneer of sales management and for developing formal methods for training and assessing salespersons. In spite of all his genius, Patterson was quirky. He sought total control of his surroundings, imposing his personal values on employees. As a food and fitness fanatic, he had employees weighed every six months. He often dismissed employees for trivial reasons just to deflate their self-confidence and, soon after, rehire them back.

Patterson’s employees and customers branded him abusive and confrontational. Patterson once dismissed an executive by asking him to visit a customer. When the executive drove back to NCR headquarters, he found his desk had been thrown out on the lawn. Right on time, his desk burst into flames. He was “fired.”

Thomas Watson Sr. was “fired” by NCR

Famously, NCR’s star sales executive Thomas Watson Sr. (1874–1956) met a similar fate. In 1914, Watson argued that NCR’s dominant product, mechanical cash registers, would soon go obsolete. He proposed that NCR develop electric cash registers. Patterson resisted the idea. He warned Watson not to overstep his boundaries and demanded that Watson focus on sales only and intrude into product innovation. Following an argument at a meeting, Patterson dismissed Watson. In a fit of rage, Patterson had workers carry Watson’s desk outside and had it lit on fire. Watson Sr. was thus “fired.”

Watson Sr. still believed in the potential for electric cash registers. He joined a smaller competitor, Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR,) which soon grew into International Business Machines (IBM.) Watson Sr. led IBM for forty years and turned it into the world’s leading technology company.

Source/Source: Keynote address by Mark Hurd, then-president and COO of Teradata at Kellogg School of Management’s Digital Frontier Conference on 17- and 18-Jan-2003. Teradata was previously a division of NCR Corporation, the company Patterson founded.