Ultimate Job Security/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character who really should get fired escapes punishment thanks to their competence.

  • Straight: Alice routinely talks down to her coworkers and superiors, but because she's so skilled, the fine folks at Trope Co never let her go.
  • Exaggerated: Alice is rude to literally everyone for no good reason. But she still doesn't get fired.
  • Justified: Alice is exceptionally skilled, and finding and/or training a replacement would take way too much time and money. Trope Co has to put up with her, for better or worse.
  • Inverted: George Jetson Job Security
  • Subverted: Alice finally commits the ultimate offense and finally gets fired...
  • Double Subverted: ...but she comes back because she's the only one who can solve a problem.
  • Parodied: Alice is a neo-Nazi serial killer who walks the halls of Trope Co spraying everyone who get in her way with a flamethrower. She doesn't get fired because she has boobs and the boss is always calling her murders "cute" and saying "I never really liked him anyway". No one even knows what her job is.
  • Deconstructed: Alice is tremendously skilled, but is hated by everyone around her. She may not be getting fired, but her coworkers ensure that her job isn't going to be any cakewalk as well.
  • Reconstructed: Loath as they are to admit it, Alice's coworkers acknowledge that her skills truly are the best - and they'll follow her, for better or worse.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice's job status at the company changes from day to day.
  • Averted: Alice is either exceptionally skilled and incredibly nice, or of average skills and temperament.
  • Enforced: "We need a character who's incredibly skilled but a huge jackass! That's how it works in real life, right?"
  • Lampshaded: "Oh goody...I get to work with Alice. I'm so looking forward to her criticizing everything about me."
  • Invoked: "I'm so vital to this company, I can do whatever I want!"
    • Alternately, Alice designs the computer system herself and refuses to tell anyone else how it works, thus making sure that she can't be replaced.
  • Defied: Alice's superiors let her know that in spite of her incredible skills, they're not going to be giving her any special treatment and that she's got to act the same way everyone else does.
  • Discussed: "Why hasn't Alice been fired yet? It seems like she shouldn't have this job anymore."
  • Conversed: "Ugh! These TV types frustrate me. If I acted that way at my job, they'd fire my ass so fast my head would spin!"

We can't fire you, even if you don't go back to Ultimate Job Security.

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