[john_other_john]

long ago, when I had just a tiny company and we were essentially a friendly lot, we'd do skits once a month, competing to come up with the best reasons to fire each other, for prizes and forfeits. It was a game, but it helped among other things to relieve a lot of internal tension that might otherwise have politicized us.

About that time, or rather a few years later, reflecting on those skits, I told my cofounder, "Dude, I have come to the conclusion that lately if I worked for myself i'd have quit, and if I hired myself i'd have fired myself. What went wrong?" as a result I stepped out of management for a while, and hit the proverbial drawing board.

I can imagine now that someone would sue for this sort of thing being bullying at work, or some such rot, but the skits gave us often too much insight into the real effective personalities at our work, often in the "too much information" category, but almost invariably in good humor.

Just thought the exercise might yet benefit somebody else, still, for the mention.