3

Powerlessness Is A Shitty Feeling

The moment HR or a teenage supervisor or a "Fuck off" scrawled in feces on an old Pop-Tart put in your locker by an anonymous source tells you you're no longer needed, it's a bit like ending a date with your partner gently cupping your sexual organs, twisting them, scalding them with hot pizza, and then stomping them into the small gap between wooden slats in a fence.

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There really is a stock photo for everything.

You have become useless to the other party in a way you weren't expecting, and it's a harsh reality when it comes to sit on your face. You thought you were on the ball, skilled, and, most of all, important. Whether consciously or not, you had a feeling of importance. You were needed. But not anymore.

2

You Have No Idea How Much You Love Your Job

Everyone bitches about work. I bet an asshole like Donald Trump goes home, eats a taco bowl, and complains about how many Mexicans don't love him while his robot wife nods and says one of 10 pre-programmed soothing things about his big ol' catcher's mitt hands. The fact is that you never realize how good your job was until someone slaps it from your hands like it's a quesadilla with a scorpion in it, and you watch it tumble into the dirt like a child dropping their ice cream because they're a bumbling, underdeveloped fool of a human. (Bang, two food metaphors in the same sentence!)

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Let's see one of you try to hold down a job in the real world!

Then you realize you should have loved that job more and better and harder and deeper and with a slight twist in your hips. You should have stayed the night with your job instead of saying you had an early morning and needed to head out at 3 a.m. You should have spooned.

My job was pretty dope. I wrote funny articles and brainstormed funny ideas, and sometimes I made comics or little meme things, and sometimes I just wrote nonsense, and for a while I worked with a team of extremely hilarious and creative writers, and I even got a couple of trips abroad out of it. I can't say anything bad about my job. Except that I lost it, and for a brief period of time, I panicked like a gas-soaked marmot running through a forest fire.

You only realize your job is awesome when you have to compare it to your other options. Homelessness is appealing in a Bohemian sort of way, but am I prepared to eat rat and buttfuck a rusty Chevy? Not really.

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But in a straight-up fight, I'll kick any rat's ass on this entire planet.

That kind of work you consider beneath you is out there as well, but if I have to report to a supervisor who's in his teens at this point in my life, one of us is going to end the shift with, at the very least, a hand in the deep fryer. No, that won't do.

1

The Best New Job Is An Old Job

Familiarity breeds contempt, except where money is concerned. The more familiar you are with a job, the happier you'll be -- at least in principle. Like, you may be borderline psychotic from gutting fish for 30 years, but by god, when you snap, all your victims are going to be gutted in the most efficient way the media has ever seen. Because you know your job and you're good at it. Which is why your first instinct after getting fired is to look for basically the same job anywhere else. It's your niche.

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Precision cuts were always your destiny.

But no new job will ever be quite as good as a job you've already done, and this is why burning bridges is a terrible idea -- not just from a river-crossing standpoint, but from all standpoints. You might think leaving a job in a blaze of middle fingers, fart sounds, and C-bombs would be a great way to stick it to corporate America, but corporate America is more foul than one disgruntled employee could ever be. Remember, you may tell your boss to go fuck his grandma's skull with a goat dick, but the company he worked for may very well have exploited tens of thousands of children in third-world countries to manufacture their goods. They're evil; you're just miffed. Think the devil cares if you don't use a coaster in his house?

So if you have any job you can bear and you find yourself quitting or getting fired, don't leave by dropping trou and scooting your ass across the floor like a dog who ate dental floss and now has a poop net festering back there.

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Besides, your dog just does that because he wants you to recycle more.

Leave with grace and dignity, because maybe one day you can come back in a better position. Or maybe someone there will have another job somewhere else, and will remember you as a person who wasn't an arsonist (a quality many employers are looking for). Push that rage aside and just focus it on being better. It'll probably help you in the long run.

As you may have guessed, this section here is absolutely about being back at Cracked. I was away for a while due to employment constraints, and now I have returned to make love to your brains with my words. This is much better than trying to become a staff writer for Cat Fancy magazine, because I don't even fancy cats that much, and I'll be damned if I'm going to spend time on weekends and evenings learning how just so I can whip up some articles on why Maine Coons are better suited to your personality than the scrotal sphinx cat. It's good to be back.

See why these people deserved to be fired in 5 Insane People Who Just Got Fired from Teaching Your Kids and learn some job-losing shortcuts in The Fastest Way to Get Fired.

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