For This Awful Economy: The Five Best "You're Fired" Scenes

As someone who's been there, I can empathize with the folks from the Houston Chronicle, Schlumberger, and a host of other companies whose employees have gotten the axe in recent weeks. Not being an HR manager, I can unfortunately only offer up a collection of "laid-off scenes" to help you briefly forget their troubles.

5. The Bobs - Office Space (1999) For a ten-year old movie, it's still gut-churningly accurate. And I feel quite certain Chron employees who were never spoken to face-to-face by Jeff Cohen can identify with Bob Porter's line about "avoiding conflict whenever possible."




4. The Crazy Hitchhiker - There's Something About Mary (1998) As Farrelly Brothers movies go, this is one of the better ones (Kingpin is still my personal favorite), but Harlan Williams' all-too-brief role as the "7-Second Abs" guy is a pure, shining beacon of true insanity amidst 90 minutes of eyeball zits and Brett Favre.



3. Ari Gold - Entourage Ari gets fired a lot, from what little of the show I've seen, but nothing compares with this comprehensive tableau: the security guards, the public dressing down, the yanking of company phone and car privileges. Though I'd be a lot more sympathetic if I didn't suspect Jeremy Piven is actually much like this in real life.



2. The Old Man fires Dick Jones - RoboCop (1987) After much fruitless searching, this is the best I could come up with. Curiously, there are a ton of "alternate" RoboCop endings out there (one featuring Sailor Moon...*shudder*), but any actual clips of the Old Man firing Jones (thus eliminating Murphy's secret OCP directive) have been edited to omit the violence. Meanwhile, you can still choose from about a dozen versions of "turtle fucking a shoe."



1. Harry Tasker terminates the "Sand Spider" - True Lies (1994) The `90s were a simpler time, when Hollywood villains were usually of Middle Eastern extraction and Arab groups understandably protested. Today, with TSA watch lists and round-the-clock surveillance of alleged "terrorists," the idea of being Sidewindered into a helicopter probably doesn't sound all that bad.