by Isabel Routner

Created on: August 30, 2007   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

There is nothing quite as thrilling as a good firing. I love calling my mother on a Monday afternoon, "Mom! Guess what? I got canned!" She is such a proud parent. I am the master of one thing in my life, I must admit.

I know when it's coming.

I can always tell when I am about to be unceremoniously "let-go." And in my never-ending mission to thwart and undermine my superiors, I like to come up with a good reason to quit. "HA! You cannot fire me, silly! I quit your crazy job!"

As it stands these days, I own my own company. Turns out the only person I am remotely capable of allowing to boss me around is myself. Ironically, I even threaten myself with termination on a daily basis. I get tired of me.

The best firing ever, sadly, was not my own. Rather, I was a manager and had one of those unruly, insubordinate, bratty kids with his first REAL job, which, much to my dismay, was also unionized. Trust me, it doesn't get any worse that that.

I was a manager with a large healthcare company in the billing and collections unit. I had a staff of 27, which was the most hodge-podge group of asylum escapees I've ever had to deal with. And I've dealt with a lot. Where the previous manager scraped up this posse, I will never know. But, if I had to guess, it was visiting day at the nut house when he did his recruiting.

Of all these folks, however, one stood out amongst the group. He was all of about 21 years old. I think he mentioned his previous job had been shoveling dung at a dairy farm. Which, of course, is automatic qualification for working in billing for health care. He was actually pretty smart, however, which I think just irritated me more.

Now, the real downfall of my job here was that my staff, all 27, were unionized. As any manager knows, that is tantamount to the insurgence of China on, say, Delaware. Its a pretty unfair deal, lovingly referred to as "the shaft." I think most unionized workers are regular, easy-going folks, but there is always that one guy. You know the one. The one that clings to the union with vise grip strength. He uses them as an excuse for absolutely everything.

My department was a cubicle wall away from the Medicare department. And as such, we had many shared resources. We shared printers, file rooms, etc. One thing we shared, that which would cause great civil unrest in the company as a whole, was the refrigerator. Who knew? Its always the thing last on your list. You try desperately, as a manager, to pro actively eliminate revolt by scheduling

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