Inspirational Advice For The Recently Unemployed


Recently Unemployed

When the economy went south and took gazillions of jobs with it, I began to hear lots of inspirational advice for the recently unemployed.

“Think of it as a new start!”

“It’s a great opportunity to try something new!”

“Being let go could end up being the best thing that ever happened to you!”

All of which is fine, but I remember actually saying out loud to the radio “Really? Ok, I suppose if you’re a fish, then, yes, being let go is fantastic.”

Writing is rarely that easy, but sometimes you get lucky.

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Mark Anderson Mark Anderson's cartoons appear in publications including Forbes, The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review. His business cartoons are available for licensing at his website, Andertoons.com.

7 Reactions
  1. It’s easy for someone who feels secure in a job to make the statement that being let go is an opportunity. But I am one of the unemployed, who in this moment has only about $40 to my name, and I am saying the same thing.

    Let’s face it. You never lose a job you love. You usually lose a job that has been boring you to death, that you have been doing just to survive. It’s time that we went beyond just surviving. After all, they will never write on our epitaph, “She survived.”

    Losing your job gets you to stop, discover who you really are, and what you are here to do. I write about this in my book, Not a Guru, which describes my journey from losing everything I had to creating a joyful life that I could never have imagined.

  2. Funny cartoon. I wish the fish were a “social media expert” as that seems to be where many of the new jobs are.

  3. great post, I think we should look at it positevely for us internet marketers. We are self employed and people keeps loosing jobs, don’t you find this an advantage for us?

  4. Great cartoon–I find it somewhat appalling when people attempt to paint business decisions that clearly are not working to your advantage as giving you an opportunity. As an employer you have an ethical responsibility to be completely forthright when it comes to breaking bad news to your dependents.

  5. Charleen Larson

    The cartoon made me smile. Not because it’s funny, though it is, but because my husband gets a little sad every time we have trout and says, “That’s one fish that won’t be going home to his wife and children tonight.” Great minds, etc.

  6. me too the cartoons is cool.

  7. The cartoon’s cool to me. And I hear Despina…but it doesn’t hurt to laugh once in a while