The prospect of being fired can be scary. No one wants to be out on their own, looking for a new job. But being laid off is a blessing! You get severance packages and unemployment and plenty of time to coast at home eating cereal before you reenter the horrible job market. Here’s how to avoid getting fired while hopefully being the first choice for lay-offs:
Bring in baked goods!
Bringing in baked goods makes people like you. But it’s not real work, so it’ll probably get in the way of you doing something you were supposed to be doing in the office. You’ll seem cool enough not to get fired so long as you’re doing the absolute bare minimum. And when they’re figuruing out which staff to trim for layoffs, they’ll want to keep the people who really contribute to the bottom line, not the person who brought in donuts once. This is a sound strategy!
Organize all the work birthday parties.
Again, this is a task that no one really needs, but they will like it. They won’t really have grounds for firing you for not being a team player if you collected $2 from everyone in the office for Tom’s Starbucks gift card. But they will have reason to want to lay you off in the first round if this is how you’re spending your time in the office! You are the perfect balance between likeability and uselessness!
Befriend your boss’s spouse.
Making friends with the boss’s spouse is a great way of showing that you’re a nice person who deserves the basic human decency of not being fired on a whim. Plus, Ashley’s wife knows you have dog mouths at home to feed now. But when it comes to laying off half the staff, Ashley and her wife will happily remind you that this buyout is nothing personal and strictly a business decision. Hey, now you can still use her for a reference!
Finding the right balance of not being fired but definitely being the first to go in layoffs is hard. But so long as you’re not amazing at your job but do seem nice, you can get there. Good luck!
