Lose Your Job Now: 5 Tips to Get to Severance Heaven

You've schemed, you've scammed, you've plotted, but the elusive layoff
has evaded you for the last time. Your desire to go to that spacious
severance-package-in-the-sky needs to be fulfilled without further ado.
How will you get upper management to see how pointless your position
really is? Follow these five tips and soon you'll be packing your
pictures.

1. Work in customer service.

Between voice-response systems, outsourcing to other countries, and form emails, who needs to talk to a person? See Exhibit A:

"Dear Sir or Madam,

Thank you for your feedback. At this time we are unable to . We
highly value you as a customer and apologize for any inconvenience this
may cause. We hope you will consider NeverDoingBusinessWithYouAgain,
Inc. in the future.

Sincerely,


Generic Jenny"

With quality responses such as these, who needs to talk to a customer service agent?

2. Apply for middle management.

In the pyramid-scheme of employment, middle management is the
most superfluous. You're the guy whose job it is to make sure that
other employees are doing their jobs. If you work for a micro-manager,
your boss isn't only making sure that you're doing your job; he's also
making sure that your employees are doing their jobs. If your industry
is in a slump, has put a freeze on hiring, and employee numbers are
eroding due to attrition, why have 10 people managing 250 employees
when previously they were managing 300? Is $60,000/year, benefits, paid
vacation, and personal time really worth an increase of 0.002% in
productivity? If you can do the math, so can upper management. Submit
that e-application immediately.

3. Work in the telecommunications industry.

Between cell phones, cable internet, VoIP, and mergers, the
telecommunications industry is all but dead. Countless individuals been
talked into keeping a landline by their telephone company "just in
case" their cell phone goes dead. These consumers will soon realize
that their cell phones almost never go dead, and, if they do, they can
always port to a different company with better coverage areas. With
"naked DSL" (DSL service that does not require a landline) becoming
available in more and more areas, landlines will soon be a distant
memory. And the phone number the customers have had a cozy, intimate
relationship with for the past 25 years? These landline numbers can be
ported to cell phones, too! The heat of the home phone has fizzled.

4. Work somewhere for a long time. Remind people of this. Constantly.

Sure, there's a learning curve for every job, but somewhere
between years one and two you'll hit that proficiency peak. After this
point, you need something else, like incalculable business
relationships or unique knowledge, to keep you afloat. If you don't
have these, don't seek them. If you do, downplay these assets. Upper
management will begin to wonder whether your 10 years of experience is
really worth all the extra pay.

5. Work somewhere with a disproportionately high sign-on bonus.

If you're Larry Page or Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, or
an actuary with dueling master's degrees in Actuarial Science and
Mathematics, you deserve a hefty sign-on bonus. If you're flipping
burgers at McDonald's or telemarketing at Geico, you don't. When a
company with a "high school diploma preferred, but not required" policy
is offering a sign-on bonus, its because they're desperate for
help during an uncharacteristically busy season. These companies are
hoping that attrition will conveniently dispose of these extra
employees when customer volumes return to normal. If this doesn't
happen, you're looking at your coveted cash cow of unemployment when
they drop the axe.