Here at the University of New Haven, we pride ourselves on education and helping students better themselves to get and keep a job that will hopefully become a career.  But the lecturer that SCOPE Comedy and Lecture had on Thursday, November 10 gave a different kind of message.  Jeff Havens talked about the opposite of keeping a job; he talked about “How to Get Fired.”

Havens didn’t want students to reach their full potential, but instead he’d rather they slack off and create a world record of the fastest person fired ever.  He talked about four basic steps: fake your resume, establish your incompetence, destroy your work ethic, and be a difficult person (but he used less tactful words).  All these steps are bound to get you fired either as soon as an employer finds out about them, or they get annoyed enough.

First comes fake your resume.  Havens joked about how most of our resumes looked the same, and we should spice them up a little bit.  Some suggestions were to add being runner up for an award that people don’t know about or maybe adding you ran in races (even though you hate running).  The point was to make yourself look better to an employer just to get in the door.

The next few steps come after you get in the door. Now you need to prove that you are not fit for the job, and your goal is to get fired.  Havens talked about how to establish your incompetence, destroy your work ethic, and being a difficult person.  There are a few ways to do all of these things, such as to ask questions about everything imaginable to establish your incompetence, waste time on the internet to destroy your work ethic, and start rumors about your coworkers to be a difficult person.  All of these things are bound to get you fired sooner or later.\

Now of course, there was a sarcastic twist on what students really should be doing.  By telling us what will get us fired, he was really telling us how to avoid getting fired.  The show was sarcastic and funny, and Havens had some really funny points to prove how much he was joking. At the end, he even gave a little talk on what his lecture really meant.  It was a great Thursday night, and I think the people that came really learned a lot by learning the opposite.