Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Fire Me...Please!

Last night, we watched the summer reality show "Fire Me...Please!" on CBS. I am generally not a fan of the summer reality fare. It did, however, birth my favorite - Survivor, so I will occasionally turn one on to see if it might be the next cultural phenomena. This one is not it. It was interesting though, to see how much people will tolerate from people working for them. If you have not seen the show, the premise is that these people try to get fired from their new jobs as close to 3:oopm as possible - without going over. Last night the bosses put up with:

- Sleeping on the job - complete with loud snoring in the showroom
- Purposely sloppy work
- Direct violation of company rules - i.e. taking personal calls repeatedly
- Extremely annoying behavior
- Rude treatment of customers

Even after all of that, it seemed like the bosses were very reluctant to fire the rogue employees. I am not sure what this says of our current working climate. Maybe people are more tolerant of others and willing to give second chances? Or maybe we're so afraid of confrontation that we will avoid it at all costs - even to our livelihood? Or more likely - I should turn off the TV and read a book or something.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm getting some good ideas for my job performance from this show. I think it's funny. I can't believe what people put up with! I think they are afraid of a lawsuit or something. You can see the terror in their eyes when the "employee" comes back with the cameras to let them in on the secret...that they've been on a tv show. Man, how do you get a gig like that?

Anonymous said...

Hey John. Great insight on this topic!