Anytime an employee in a white-collar occupation leaves his job, he always manages to leave with an empty copier paper box full of his personal items. Anyone who has ever worked in corporate America has seen this icon many times and the sight of this is often followed by other co-workers whispering to each other wondering what happened with this individual. It's embarassing enough for this guy to explain to his former co-workers that he was given the "corporate axe" as he makes that last walk down the hallway with that infamous copier paper box. But if you color code the boxes with a label of some sort, everyone will know the story without asking. Therefore I propose the following color codes:
RED will indicate that the employee was fired for making a bad mistake and/or not properly doing his job. ORANGE will indicate that he was terminated as a result of being suspected of wrong doing but would not prove his innocence. (e.g. if they accused him of stealing office supplies but he refuses to allow his car to be searched) YELLOW if the employee decided to quit after the boss said, "You better give me one good reason as to why I should not fire you!" and he figured that his job wasn't worth fighting for or perhaps there were irreconcilable differences. GREEN if the employee willingfully decided to resign without reason or incident. And finally BLUE if the employee is resigning in good standing and is due to get a grand send-off party as he goes on to persue other career interests.
Also, I figure that white or beige could be good colors to use to indicate that an employee is just moving his desk or making a latteral move in the company. I can recall many times when I thought someone was quitting or getting fired because they were packing their desk items into that box only to learn that they were going to a different division of the company.-- Jscotty, Oct 06 2006 Of course any employee worth his salt will have a bootleg BLUE box handy in case the boss tries to send him off with red or orange.-- sien, Oct 07 2006 Ah, yes, let's *really* humiliate people at a very difficult time for them. Big smelly fishbone for you to suck on, you heartless corporate bastard.-- DrCurry, Oct 09 2006 But sometimes you're carrying a box of stuff home just because you're stealing stationery - we need a reserved box colour for that.-- hippo, Oct 09 2006 Ok.. so lets use a grey box with black stripes which says, "I'm not fired, I am just stealing supplies".
I guess being a heartless bastard came as a result of how I was taught in the early days of my employment. When I worked in retail, if an employee was caught stealing from the store, the manager would call the police and have them arrested. As the cops took them away in handcuffs they would have to take them right through the middle of the store and everyone would see it. So when people for the next shift came in, the previous shift people could say, "Did you hear what happened to Eddie?" and everyone would know just by the fact that they had the handcuffs on.-- Jscotty, Oct 09 2006 random, halfbakery