I'm not ashamed to admit it. I am head over heels gaga in love with Alan Sklover.

 

If there's a Mrs. Sklover, I hope she is not the jealous type, because there is no way I am giving up my Alan. He may not be the most handsome man, or the richest, but he has one attribute that makes him totally irresistible - he is willing to stand up for thee and me in our ongoing battles with the dark forces of management.

 

I first discovered my legal love bunny when I came upon an article on his Web site, skloverworkingwisdom.com. "The 21 Necessary Precautions Resigning from Your Job" was the name of the treatise and I have to say I was impressed by Sklover's analysis of the pitfalls that could befall us as we skip happily from our present employment servitude to the brighter, greener pastures of our next position.

 

For thee and me and all people who spend the majority of every working day contemplating how happy we would be working someplace else, having a Sklover on our side is like money in the bank.

 

And we will need money in the bank. As Alan writes in his legal love note, "resigning from a job, and transitioning to another, is deceptively complex, as the process is just loaded with potentially serious risks."

 

For example, consider Precaution No. 1 - "Must you give notice?" Most of us dream of the day when we can tell our managers to "take this job and shove it." It's a daily, if not an hourly fantasy, and usually includes a dramatic recitation of our supervisor's many professional and personal sins presented in a historical context and concluding with an Oscar-worthy curtain speech studded with inspired name-calling and general vituperation.

 

As satisfying as such a confrontation can be, my Alan sagely points out that if you indulge yourself by giving notice the traditional two weeks before you plan to leave, you may find yourself in for 14 days of reprisals, not the least of which could include your soon-to-be ex-employer poisoning your new position before you get the chance to screw it up yourself.

 

Precaution No. 6 focuses on the issue of what you can - and can't - take with you when you leave. Considering that you've spent the best years of your life chained to your cubical, you may have come to think of your office equipment as virtual body parts. You wouldn't leave a leg behind when you make your exit - why abandon your computer, your phone, your carpeting?

 

Even if you manage to resist pulling the acoustical tiles from the ceiling, Sklover warns about going home with any information that could be considered a trade secret, like the names in your Rolodex or the bookmarked porn sites on your hard drive. My best advice in this situation is to simply burn down your cubical before you leave. And get a lobotomy. You never used your frontal lobes in all your years at your present job; why start now?

 

Precaution No. 14 warns that you should be prepared to be "shown the door." As Sklover points out, many companies believe that the proper response to a resignation is not a two-week fade-out phase-out. Instead, before the ink is dry on the resignation graffiti you scrawl on the wall of the conference room, you'll be marched to the front door by two burly HR geeks who will ceremoniously boot you out into the parking lot, after first turning you over and shaking out all the company-owned pencils and paper clips you have stuffed into the pockets of your poncho.

 

So, take the smart and honorable approach. Steal all your office supplies the day before you resign.

 

Precaution No. 15 concerns the dreaded "exit interview" and includes the one fundamental truth that should be branded on the cerebellum of every human who gets a paycheck - "Don't ever believe your HR rep is your friend."

 

Ask anyone who has ever whispered their most intimate secrets into the empathetic ear of a HR professional. These marshmallow-sweet and compassionate individuals who drape themselves with a cloak of caring are more synthetic than sympathetic, as you will quickly learn as your innermost secrets are typed up and sent up to management, with copies to the companies lawyers, forensic accountants and paid character assassins.

 

This brings up the only problem in looking for love in Sklover. You could realize that the risks of leaving your miserable job are so dire, you might as well stay.

 

Bob Goldman has been an advertising executive at a Fortune 500 company in the San Francisco Bay area. He offers a virtual shoulder to cry on at bob@funnybusiness.com.