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In times of economic uncertainty, whose advice should you heed? If you said an “instigator of several nationally televised PR stunts” you fail, and deserve what you get:

With a brutal wave of U.S. layoffs, and the single greatest number of job losses since 1974, one controversial media expert is encouraging more people to quit their jobs preemptively.

David Seaman, author of Dirty Little Secrets of Buzz and instigator of several nationally televised PR stunts, says that quitting today is the answer for millions of workers caught in limbo.

Seaman’s plan is that you preemptively quit your job on the basis that “I quit before I was fired” has magic properties that will make you seem like a god among men at the temp agency. This is a great plan, hampered only by its immense stupidity. For example, complete the following fantasy:

Picture this, you are waiting in line with thirty other candidates in an employment office for an interview. When you get to talk to the HR guy he asks, “So you lost your job like the other hundred people I have seen today?” You can honestly say, “No, I had a good job and I was promoted but I quit because I can do better and I am highly sought after”.

In my mind, the interview ends like this:

“So you quit before you even had any interviews for a new job? Were they not giving even token severance packages? Seriously, did you think that through at all? Have you even glanced at the news lately?”
“Ummm, errr….”

The other problem is that if enough people did this, your interview would actually go like this:
“So did you lose your job like the other hundred people I saw today, or are you one of those dumbasses who quit without a plan before they could be laid off?”

But hey, it’s not David Seaman’s problem. With more than 11,000 views on CNN’s iReport and the consequent television facetime he can milk those views for, he’s prolly doing all right. But there’s no reason to just sit there hating him when you can let him inspire you: in tough times, the unscrupulous can always prey upon the desperate or the stupid, and with a 24 hour news day that has to be filled with something cheap and new every day the opportunity has never been better! So just don’t quit your dayjob until you know what your schtick for FOX news is.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 10:11 pm and is filed under A million ways to mortgage the future, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.