In the pantheon of life experiences, getting fired is probably one of the very worst ones you can ever endure. It’s something you shouldn’t wish on anyone, although I can point to a few first-class assholes I’ve been very happy to see get the boot.

So that’s what hooked me when I saw this story in Advertising Age, a sister publication of Workforce Management, titled “How to Be Fired.” It’s written by Martin Dihl, a creative director based in New Jersey, and he makes a great case that although we’re taught all sorts of different things in life, “no one ever teaches you how to be fired.”

I’ve written about this topic a little this year, most notably when I asked the question “Is there ever a good time to fire someone?” after the New York Mets canned their field manager in the middle of the night right after playing a road game in California.  

The Ad Age article is interesting because it gives you a number of tips on how to cope with being fired or, to put it another way, being the subject of an “involuntary layoff,” as it is sometimes called in politically correct HR speak. I’m talking about tips like “Don’t sweat it until it happens” and “Freak out. Grieve. Scream. Yell. Throw things. Cry. Drink. Whatever. But get it out of your system. You absolutely, positively have to deal with it now, otherwise you’ll carry it around with you for the next 30 years.”

There is some good coping advice here, but for the most part, Dihl just deals with how the person being fired should deal with the issue, not how the manager doing the dirty deed should handle it. For that, you should look at how not to do it and see the example set by Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis when he dumped his head football coach earlier this fall.

But you know what really got me thinking when I saw the story? It’s the notion that so many people are getting fired, bought out, laid off and outsourced right now that articles like “How to Be Fired” are viewed as mainstream business commentary, and not just a niche topic for an unfortunate few.

In other words, we need stuff like this because large numbers of people losing their jobs has become all too common. And that’s a sad point to ponder as we head into the holiday season.