炒 means friend and 魷魚 means squid. 炒魷魚 means fried squid, and it’s something you might order at a seafood restaurant. Perhaps with salt and pepper. It also means the act of being fired from your job.
Back in the day, Hong Kong had a lot of factories that made all sorts of things. There weren’t enough workers in the factories, so factory owners would provide accommodation for workers. This meant that people in China could cross over to Hong Kong with a few possessions and find a job and accommodation in one go.
These workers would have a few possessions and a quilt. If a worker got fired, they would lose their accommodation as well. Typically a fired worker would wrap up their belongings into their quilt to make a parcel sort of shape.
These quilt parcels sort of resemble a piece of fried squid. Imagine you’re working at a company in Hong Kong. You look around for your good mate Koushal but you can’t find him. You ask someone “Hey where’s Koushal?” and they’ll reply “炒魷魚” or “炒zuo”.