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.

There’s a guy I used to work with who seems to think that much of the economic downturn we are currently experiencing is media-created, and that the media is “rooting for a recession.”

Well, I don’t believe the media has had much to do with the 440,000 jobs that have been lost this year in the U.S., the housing market woes driven by the collapse of so many subprime lenders or the rise in oil and domestic gas prices to record levels. But the media does reflect what is going on in the job market, and this story in today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution is a good look into how Americans are struggling to make the best out of a bad situation:

“ ‘It’s a Darwinian job market. You take what you can get,’ said Georgia Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond.” He added that people in Georgia are “ ‘downshifting … and taking jobs paying less money because they can’t find anything else.’ In his nine years as labor commissioner, Thurmond said he hasn’t seen a job market as rough as this one. ‘It’s tougher than post-9/11,’ he said. ‘This is much more difficult, primarily due to inflation being fueled by high gas prices.’ ”

When times get tough and things tighten up, resilient people do what they have to do. As the Journal-Constitution story points out, “Cleaning firms, book stores, security firms, big-box retailers and the like have seen a spike in job applications in recent months, some from well-educated, white-collar workers. And many workers of all educational and economic levels are doing jobs they never dreamed they’d be doing.”

How does all this jibe with the notion of some huge potential shortage of workers and talent from the American workplace? As I’ve said before, I think it’s a “Talent-Shortage Myth,” particularly since baby boomers seem to want to hang on and continue working.

Yes, there are still shortages of workers in certain fields. A report today from online job board Jobfox lists the “20 Most Recession-Proof Professions,” but a more meaningful Jobfox list is the “Top 25 Most Wanted Job Candidates.” This is a ranking of the kinds of jobs (and skills) most in demand today, and it pretty much tells you what you already know: Nurses and health care workers, accountants and various types of engineers and technical workers are in short supply.

The problem with this list is that it is tough for people in fields where jobs are getting cut to suddenly get retrained for positions as accountants or engineers, although some headway has been made turning former auto workers into nurses and health care professionals, as we’ve written about before here at Workforce Management.

The Journal-Constitution story quotes one economist, Peter Morici of the University of Maryland, who calls what we are currently going through a “middle-class recession.” So far, he said, “we have a low-grade recession. The jobs are coming out of manufacturing, construction, banking. Not cleaning services and fast food. Lower-end industries aren’t shedding jobs, yet.”

I guess that’s good news for people losing their jobs in those middle-class professions, because at some point, any job is better than no job. For all workers, I think the smart thinking in this economy continues to be pretty simple and follows what I have said before: You should hope for the best, but continue to prepare for the worst.

Last night, I watched the Los Angeles Angels-New York Mets game from Anaheim (right down the road from the Workforce Management world headquarters) and heard the Angel announcers talking about the rumors surrounding whether Mets manager Willie Randolph would keep his job, given the team’s mediocre record. The Mets won 9-6, so Randolph’s job seemed safe for another day, right?

Wrong.

Driving to work this morning, I heard the news-radio chatter about how the Mets had finally fired Randolph, after Monday’s victory, at 12:11 a.m. California time. The timing seemed especially odd since the Mets played at home Sunday and then flew 3,000 miles to California. Why would you force a guy to fly coast to coast and then fire him in the middle of the night after his team actually did something good?

The New York media is having a field day with this one. Newsday’s headline, “Mets’ handling of Willie cowardly,” seemed to say it all—and for good reason. And it brings to mind the long-standing HR question: Is there ever a good time to fire someone?

I found myself engaged in this debate a few years ago. I had to let someone go and wanted to do it on Friday, at the end of the day, so the person could leave quietly with a minimum of people around to notice. My HR people, however, told me that it was well known that Friday was the worst possible day for a termination. They suggested I do it on Monday instead, but that seemed both odd and counterintuitive to me.

So I throw the question out to all of you: When is the right time (if there is a right time) to let someone go? Is there a best day or time to do it? Or is it less about the day and time and more about how you treat the person on the other side of the table? I’d love to get your comments here (or sent to me directly at jhollon@workforce.com).

As for the Mets and the team’s handling of Willie Randolph, one thing is clear: The Mets were incredibly indecisive during this process. And no matter what you may think is the right time to fire someone, the New York media clearly believe that 3:15 am EDT is the wrong time.

“You know what this reeks of?” Newsday sports columnist Jim Baumbach asked. “Someone made this decision days ago and agonized for hours on how to announce it to the public in the best way possible to keep the pressure off their own self. … This is not about whether this was the right move. But Randolph deserved better than how the Mets handled this, and so did the players and the fans. There is no defending the Mets management today. They screwed this up royally, and it’s hard not to think they mishandled this mess for the past week simply to find the best way to make themselves look better.”

Baumbach is on to something. All too often, the termination process is more about the feelings and needs of the managers doing the terminating than it is about the impact on the person getting cut loose. That’s why there is such a debate over the “right” time to do it. We frequently get too caught up in procedure and are less concerned with the impact on that living, breathing, feeling human being who is about to experience something terrible.

Am I wrong about this? Are there really “best practices” and best days and times when it comes to terminations? If there are, I’d like to hear what they are.