Scott Berkun

Top five things *not* to do when fired

I’ve quit several jobs in my life, I’ve been re-orged into stupid positions I didn’t like, but I’ve never been outright fired. On the other hand, my friend C. had 25 jobs in less than ten years and was fired from many of them. He wouldn’t answer his phone, so I imagined a conversation with him on bad advice to give the newly fired and here’s what we came up with. The funny ones are mine. The unfunny ones are his.

5.On your last day, send the following hiaku out to every large email list inside your company : “worker bees can leave even drones can fly away, the queen is their slave”. You will get many references for future jobs this way. (If you like this, see Fight Club). Other quotes from Fight club people will like to hear you say for no reason include “These are not my khakis” and “”Do you want me to deprioritize my current reports until you advise me of a status upgrade?” Inject them randomly into conversations, repeating them until you get a response, especially if talking to HR.

4. Paste your resume on your former bosses forehead. Walk right in, even if he is in a meeting, with a brush and a bucket of glue. Get a big stroke of glue across his forehead (or on the back of his head if he starts to run away) and then slap the resume on. You should be able to get one on there before s/he realizes what’s going on. If he resists, tell him “but you said you’d help me find a new job”. If he escapes, paste resumes to all of his items you can find. His briefcase, desk, chair, computer monitor, or his boat, spouse, dog, cat, or offspring. This is an excellent way to demonstrate both your initiative and your out of the box thinking.

3. Fire your manager. Nothing says you can’t fire your manager right back. When he says “You’re fired.” “You say No, you’re fired.” “No look we’re letting you go.” You say “No look here bossman, I’m letting you go”. Automatically negating what people say is not only entirely therapeutic, it’s a marketable skill used by many managers, some of whom you may have worked for.

2. Make a top 20 list of people at work you know are stupider than you and send it to them, including co-workers, superiors, executives. Make sure it’s in stack ranked order, with the review scores you think they deserve next to their names. And give each a nickname like “Stinky”, “Schmucko”, “Brickface” or “Smellster”. Print out 100 copies and post them on the walls in the hallway, bathroom stalls, and print another 100 for putting on the windshield’s of all the cars in the parking lot.

1. Start a mortgage bank. I’ve heard mortgage banking is the way of the future, especially this new thing called CDOs. Now that you are unemployed you are free to take all of your saving and start dishing out loans to people who have no savings of their own. It will work. I promise. A good friend of mine named Mr. Ponzi says so.

Bonus: Make sure to send out a final status report. The shortest one you will ever write in your life. One short sentence: I have no status!

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Ok. If you’re here and haven’t smiled yet, that means you think this list sucks, I’m an asshole, and not funny. All might be true.

If so, I I invite you to fire me from making top 5 lists. It’s the least I can do for you. Go ahead, give me your worst in the comments. But be warned, I may fire you from leaving comments. Then you can fire me from commenting on your comments. And the fun will continue! (Seriously, I hope you’re doing ok).

Should managers be funny?

As I’ve grown older my tolerance for humorless people has declined – but does everyone feel this way? What about team leaders and project manager types?

Some folks at Bremen University in Germany are doing a study to find out.

They have an online survey that explores this question and they’d love to hear your opinion.