L’esprit de la sortie.
– The way that she expresses her sympathy for your plight by repeatedly saying “It’s insurance, it’s just…insurance” is remarkably similar to the way Joe Mantell says to Jack Nicholson: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
– Informing you that your term life insurance policy ends precisely at midnight the day of your termination all but invites you to spend the day pulling your feet from the mire of Willy Loman, asking yourself if you’re worth more to your loved ones dead than alive. On your bike ride to and from rehearsal, you determine that if you are hit by a car (for example) you will probably beg the doctor–if you have no chance of survival–to announce your time of death as 11:59 pm. But then, life insurance by design forces you to contemplate the manner and time of your own death.
– In an attempt to be as brutally honest with your self-assessment of the work you did at the former employer, you glibly note that in terms of a sabermetric metaphor, you were no Golden Glove candidate in the field but they will probably miss your bat.
– Even if the specific charges against you were defensible–and they were–the fact that the charges were brought against you at all robs your will to contest them. The possibility of saving a job in which you have been accused of incompetence is unattractive, and does nothing more than place you back in the chair under Damocles’ sword, waiting for the string to snap once again.
– The cab driver asks if you are done for the day, and then refers to your good fortune when you respond with a quiet affirmative. He says almost nothing else to you after you add that you are not only done for the day, but “done at that place,” to boot. You tip him fairly well using the petty cash that your former employer was good enough to give you in order to bring home all of the junk you have accumulated at your desk, as well as a bamboo plant as tall as you.
– As your mind slowly begins to wrap itself around the idea that this is an opportunity, you resolve to find a job that you care about when you apply for it, instead of a job you have to force yourself to care about until you can no longer keep up the facade.
Creative Control 