Take This Job And Sh ... Learn From It

Glenn at Instapundit passes along news of counter-demonstrations in Paris:

There are people in France who are pro-reform, who want to study, who want to work, and who are sick of being stopped from doing so by those who don't---and who understand that labor law reform is essential to job creation.

The thought of not being able to fire someone really frightens me. Not just because I'm an employer and I would still be putting up with the employee who fell asleep at her desk every afternoon because of her intense party schedule (one of several examples of ill-prepared or unmotivated former employees), but also because I think most of the people I fired learned from the experience and eventually became better, more productive and more successful employees.

So as we watch Socialistic foolishness on parade, ask yourself, "Did I ever deserve to be fired from a job?"

I sure did. I've never been fired, but I should have been from my first job out of college. I was a reporter green out of J'school who, to my mind, should have been working at the NYTimes or perhaps an even better paper, but because of a recession was working at a suburban, almost rural, twice-weekly.

For a while, I poured myself into it, but that got boring after a few months, so my fellow reporter and I took to goofing off. We became particuarly adept at bottle soccer, kicking an old Coke bottle across our tiny office, which was removed from the newspaper's more important offices -- where they sold ads and talked to customers. On day I nailed a particularly good kick, destined to hit the goal (the doorframe) high and just in -- and as it sailed through the still office air, the publisher opened the door only to see a Coke bottle on a missile-like trajectory for his right ear.

I missed, thank God, and the bottle slammed into the door jamb and fell to the ground. I don't even remember what he said. Perhaps it was, "Eet ees a good thing you are working in France because Ah cannot fire you," because for some reason I still had my job. I quit a couple weeks later and had matured considerably before I walked in the doors of my next employer, where I stayed five years, advancing all the while.

Have you got a similar story you'd like to share with the anti-firing French students, if you could? Of course, they know so much more than we do; they'd never listen.

Talkin' Technorati: France, Paris, Strikes, Socialism, Labor