This is like a collection of catharses by jilted girlfriends. "I gave her my all and she threw it all away!" Every single person quoted or mentioned sounds like an abused spouse.

He had been assigned to Virginia to downsize the operations there, she remembered, but when that job was done, he was too. Her eyes widening in a can-you-believe-it sort of gentle parody of their shock, Beth invited me to picture the scene. “It was like, ‘We think you’re valuable enough to move you down to Virginia,’ and then, ‘Sorry, we got rid of the plant, and now you’re not valuable anymore.’

And you start with this? The axe man who comes from out of town to shut down a fuckin' factory? Destroying the infrastructure for hundreds of families and we're to be sympathetic? An efficient employer would have shut down the factory by remote and an intelligent employee would look at "we're moving you down to a division we're going to close" with suspicion, at least.

Hey, kids - I did that sarariman bullshit. 90 hours a week, fukkas. 9 months or so from being a VP of something useless until I decided "fuck this shit I hate meetings" and signed up for film school. Which I didn't get into and had to do something completely different and that worked out pretty okay, too. I haven't had a cubicle since 2007 and it's been sketchy as fuck at times but fuckin' A it's clarifying. So listen up:

YOUR EMPLOYER DOESN'T OWE YOU SHIT. It's nearly impossible to fire someone for cause anymore so they'll fire you for the fuck of it. You are worth exactly as much as the value you add to your organization and no more and the more you bust ass to add value to your organization the less value you add to anything else and you know what? If you're doing anything above and beyond what they require of you that's nice and all but if they can hire a kid fresh out of college to do the same thing for 40 cents on the dollar they'll do it in a heartbeat.

This article bugs me because it implies that your work should love you. GET A FUCKING GRIP. You do stuff for MONEY. Expecting love out of it makes you Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman only without the Lotus, the legs or the one-liners. Want security? GET A CONTRACT. No contract? KEEP YOUR OPTIONS OPEN. That job you hate that you do for money because you're afraid to do anything else? Every day you don't do something else is another day in fear and hatred. Where are you a year from now? Two? Hating your job and living in fear for two fucking years.

You NEVER want to be the one broken up with. You ALWAYS wanna be the one pulling the trigger, holding the reins, controlling the message. This passive-aggressive "your job will never love you" bullshit only serves to mask the fact that you've handed over your fucking fate to an accountant.

My old job gave me a key contributor award. Fifteen hundred bucks and a standing ovation at an all-company meeting. They held board-of-directors-level meetings about what to do about "the kleinbl00 problem" 'cuz mine was a very specific set of skills that could not be duplicated easily. I was the key man on about $23m worth of contracts and if I didn't get my shit done, shit didn't get done and penalties were paid and they needed three of me. And they had an efficiency expert follow me around asking me questions for a week and four days into it she broke down crying and couldn't tell me why and I didn't know until a week later when all of a sudden, I had 72 hours notice.

Yeah. Board-of-directors level meetings and they decided to tell me on a Tuesday that my last day was a Friday. And then they insisted I go to some fucking bar for my goodbye party and nobody fucking came.

Not even the efficiency expert.

BEST GODDAMN THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME.

Wake the fuck up. THEY PAY YOU. They don't owe you shit unless you get it in writing. Assume they will can your ass the minute it will save them a dime and act accordingly. Trust me on this. Your life will improve by orders of magnitude.