Here is my plan for the future. Seems to work for others

'Ha-ha!' We got ours and you paid for it.'

Know what I’m going to do? I’m going to secure a very high-end position with some publicly-funded enterprise – something that will pay me, oh, about half a mil a year, along with assorted fringe benefits like exotic vehicles for Wendy and me, annual winter vacations in the Caymans, and summer sojourns at assorted European spas. It will all be good.

Then, I’m going to stick with the position for a year-and-a-half, say, and then I’m going to get myself dismissed for my utter heedless incompetence, and following that I will glean a big enough ‘wrongful dismissal’ settlement that I will be able to retire in luxury for the rest of my days.

Sound like a plan? Of course it does. It must be a plan because it happens every day of the week. Lazy and incompetent boneheads are toasted and they end up being pampered for the rest of their lives – often out of our pockets.

So, what is this?

In the first place you’ll notice that those in the heady upper atmosphere of positions never get ‘fired’, they ‘tender their resignations.’ Bullshit, of course, they were indeed fired, toasted, sacked, kicked out on their well-fed asses, and deservedly so. But, don’t let us say ‘fired’. We don’t say that because it casts aspersions on the judgment of the bozos who hired the ‘waste-of-oxygen’ in the first place, it also is disrespectful in a euphemism-mad world, and finally, in the wonderful world of litigation, it might leave somebody open to a big lawsuit; thus garnering even more unearned money for our aforementioned slackass.

What I fail to see is why those in the public sector, like health authorities, universities, and school superintendancies are paid so handsomely. The taxpayers, who live in an entirely different realm, see nothing within major decimal points of those figures. Furthermore, and pardon the cynicism, we also know those positions are very rarely based on genuine talent, but are more inclined to be reflective of having the ‘correct’ political attitudes, the correct ‘friends’, and a jolly good ability to brownnose in the most obsequious manner. Looking cute (for both sexes) and dressing well helps, too.

Of course, we only look at the rate of pay with such terminations; we don’t even begin to go into the realm of the perks. That’s when it gets genuinely disgusting.

As I said, I am referring to those settlements that arise in the public sector. What happens in the private corporate world matters less to me. That’s all up to the corporation and its stockholders. My only caveat here would be if the wonderful, wonderful settlements for firees are to be found in a privately owned utility, then the price of such settlements will be passed on to subscribers.

Do I write out of jealousy? Not at all. More out of confusion. My confusion lies in the fact that such settlements are rarely challenged, and the truth of the matter is, and you can check it out, these settlements (as well as the dishonesty in not outright firing someone who deserves to be fired) wreak havoc on the economies of our societies. Yet our courts rarely seem to consider this ripple effect. So, if the head of your publicly-funded health service provider gets the axe, believe me, you will pay for it. We all will. He or she, meanwhile, will be basking in a Bahamian sun.