I've been canned from several jobs, but none involved a meeting with George Clooney, who plays corporate downsizing expert Ryan Bingham in the movie Up in the Air.

There's nothing subtle, or pleasant, about being pink-slipped. If being hired is like scoring on a first date, getting sacked is more like surviving a shark attack. It is pure carnage, and the memory keeps chewing on your mauled ego for years.

On the plus side, my employers in England had the guts to do their own dirty work, rather than employing an emotional punching bag like Clooney's character. On the down side, they were brutally efficient, and indifferent. One only required 13 words to execute my dismissal. Of course, I had crashed a government vehicle the day before and not thought to inform anyone. So that probably wasn't such a bad trade-off.

The second one required a bit more dialogue, but was equally brutal. He even called my office a few hours later asking why I still hadn't left.

In fact, the only firing I emerged from with any sense of self-respect was in Asia, when some bean-counter in Seoul decided it was no longer expedient to retain my services. This time, I hadn't done anything wrong, but I still felt like a schmuck.

So it was with much pleasure, and shock, that I recently discovered Chinese employers' propensity for hiring Clooney clones - with a difference. These people, known in the trade as "career transition services advisers", rarely hand you your pink slips (they train HR how to do that), but they will sit and listen to you vent, presumably after frisking you for automatic weapons first.

The next step is providing crucial services to help you get your life back on track, such as providing temporary office space so you can lie to your wife and make frantic phone calls all day.

According to "Sandy", one of the guests on today's edition of Culture Matters on ICS, "finding a new job is a full-time job", and Chinese employers are usually happy to help you along the way.

"Most of my Chinese clients use the whole service: before, during and after," she says. So the same people who courted you in the beginning, then practically compelled you to pull the pin on a live hand grenade in their office to get a raise, will actually fund your next job hunt. No, I don't get the logic of that one, either.

The only distasteful element is the way it is all so strategically planned. Sandy claims she is often approached by the client six months before notifying the unlucky employee. In criminal law, I think they call this "malice aforethought".

However, perhaps we should pity people like Sandy, who aren't as shallow and devoid of humanity as Clooney's character. Their jobs can't be much fun (they tend to go drinking with tax collectors and morgue attendants after work). Moreover, their work can be life-threatening. After hearing the sound of the guillotine drop, one man sat and stared at Sandy for 30 minutes without any reaction.

"We always advise our clients, especially ourselves, to sit close to the door," she says, before proceeding to more practical matters. It's usually better to fire people "early in the week, late in the day," she says - so if you've made it past Wednesday lunchtime, the odds are you're still good for another week.

Curiously, in her experience, Chinese are less bothered about being let go these days than their counterparts in the West, or in Japan, as China's booming economy now provides bounteous job opportunities. Rosy employment statistics, however, don't make the experience of being told you are not wanted, or no longer considered useful, any less of a bitter pill to swallow. So we can hardly condemn Chinese companies for dragging in CTS advisers to take out the corporate laundry if they are footing the bill for no longer wanting to take responsibility of a former employee's future.

And at least it lets you save on the cost of a hand grenade.

Culture Matters is a cross-cultural bilingual talk show on International Channel Shanghai (ICS), airing Sundays from 7 to 8 pm. The program can be viewed online at www.smgbb.cn.Culture Matters.

China Daily