How are we doing today? How we doin'? Great, great. You're looking good. Love the shirt. Let me guess: Christmas present? Knew it. Great. Hey man, whenever you get a sec—and it's no biggie—I was hoping you could just pop on over to my office real quick so I can fire you.

Nothing to worry about. Trust me. Just a short little one-on-one session about you being fired. We'll have a bit of unnecessary and degrading small talk and then I'll clunkily segue into terminating your position here. I'll follow up by apologizing like I care and that'll be that. The whole thing will take a second out of your day. Promise.

You'll be in and out and unemployed in no time.

Keep working on whatever it is you're working on. I don't want to interrupt. Just want to terminate your source of income. That's all. Go ahead, take your time and finish whatever you need to do now, because afterward you won't be allowed back in here. And we'd really love it if we could get as much work as possible out of you before you go. Okay? So when you've got a free minute, just drop by my office to get fired.

Oh, no need to bring a pen and paper. Love the enthusiasm but, really, relax. It's just gonna be a quick little meeting about you not working here anymore. Honestly, corporate is making me have these with everyone. They want to get you up-to-date on how the company's moving forward and how you won't be moving with it. Again, nothing big.

Just a "Hi, how are ya, you're fired" kind of deal. Totally painless.

Door's open whenever you're ready to peek your head in and lose your job. I'll get you in and out real quick, grab your security card, confiscate your work computer, and terminate your employee profile. I'm putting it at three minutes, tops. Then you can spend your afternoon on more important things, like saying goodbye to your coworkers who will complain to you about how it's so unfair that you got fired, but won't ever say anything to me about it. And within a week we'll all pretend like you never existed.

Sound good? Good.

Don't be nervous, man. I'll make sure you're out of here way, way before you have a chance to get mad at me. I just gotta bend your ear for a quick sec about the company's fiscal policy no longer correlating with you having a job. Whenever you're ready. I'll be waiting for you.

Actually, if you'd prefer, I could go ahead and let you go right here if you want to get a head start on packing your stuff up. Got to keep moving, right? Speaking of which, it's a nice day. Maybe we can walk it out, grab some Starbucks, I could fire you, and you could keep right on walking. Better yet, I could puss out and have Gina do it. Whatever works for you.

Oh, and if you've got an extra sec, could you grab Greg and bring him in on this? I'm thinking maybe we just double-team this thing real fast, and then everyone's free to be jobless for the rest of the day. That'd be great for me, actually, because I have to run soon. Got a little powwow with the guys upstairs. They just want to talk to me real quick when I'm done down here.

Thinking I might be getting promoted.

BY STEPHEN KATZ
JANUARY 21, 2009