How to lose your job and find true love… Fed up with impossible deadlines and meaningless busywork, Anne Wyatt goes to work one day determined to resign. But that's the day her boss announces someo...

Excerpt from Chapter 1

From Mitch Burnham's book Use It or Lose It:
Think of your employees as children. You might let them sit behind the wheel, but you'd never give them the keys to the Maserati. Sure, let them pretend if it makes them feel good. But in the end, there's only one driver and it's not one of the kids.

Monday, 7:02 a.m.
Sometimes Anne Wyatt wished she could feed parts of her life into a shredder.

She stood staring out at the crystal blue sky from her seventh floor, Crystal City, Virginia, apartment, fingers warming around a Burnham Group mug, thoughts jammed in first gear as they outstripped her ability to process them all. Her short, reddish hair was
still damp from the shower and she wore one navy pump but couldn't find the other.

Should I call my brother to apologize for getting angry with him last night? Should I give up on Lean Cuisine and start eating regular frozen meals? Should I have handed in my resignation earlier when I first got word I'd landed the California job? Should I start drinking decaf or will I get a headache? Am I spending too much time with Rob when I know the relationship's not going anywhere? Should I forget about finding the other shoe and just change my outfit entirely?

Her thoughts danced and fluttered like the blossoms outside her window, eventually landing gently on the argument with her brother. Her brother was in the military and headed out for deployment overseas.

Her cat meowed gently from the short hall to the bedroom.
"Maisie, don't you think I should be able to suppress minor irritations at a time like this?" she asked without turning to look at her. She took the cat's silence as a yes.

But no, no, she had to jump in with verbal fists flying and rhetorical arrows zinging. She came from a family of fighters, after all. Her father had been a full-bird colonel and his father a general. Her mother had been an Army nurse.

Anne had not followed their path but had spent most of her young adulthood carving out a road that led in the opposite direction, away from rigidity and structure toward freedom and flexibility. She'd pursued a degree in the arts.

But she was Corporate Girl now, having forsaken flowing skirts, velvety jackets, and dangly earrings. Sometimes she wondered if her previous life had been a dream, or if she'd really wanted that life, or merely wanted to rebel or… or what?

It didn't matter anyway. She might be a responsible contributor to society now, but in her brother's eyes she would always be… Irresponsible Anne. She wished she were.

I should call Jack and smooth things over, but that's tantamount to surrender. Surely he'll lose what little respect he has for me if he senses I'm waving the white flag.

Noticing a smudge on the flat pane of glass, she quickly retrieved a bottle of window cleaner and square of paper towel. Here, at least, was a problem she could quickly solve. She'd become fastidious about her apartment lately, since she was going to need to sublet it. As she rubbed the glass, she admired the lush green landscape of spring, the earth so thick with new growth it looked like you could scoop it up with a spoon. She stepped back to admire her work just as a flash of deep blue broke away from the paler blue sky.

Bluebird of happiness—an omen! She smiled. What message do you have for me?

Bump! Splat! Bluebird of happiness ran into transparently clean window.
Ohmygod. She dropped the window cleaner as if it were a smoking gun.

Get out of here, Anne, before you slay any more harbingers of spring. She hustled to her bedroom, searching for that other shoe and rehearsing her speech.

"I'm resigning, Mr. Burnham, because…"

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If you're looking for ways to get out of a job, look no further!

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