Basic Trope: When a character is fired, they leave with a cardboard box full of their personal items.
- Straight: Alice is fired from her job at Trope Co. Her boss Bob tells her to clean out her desk or locker, so Alice grabs a cardboard box from the supply room, empties out her desk and locker, and takes the box home.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob tells Alice to put her things in a box and go. Alice gets a refrigerator box and puts her entire desk in it.
- Trope Co. closes, resulting in all the employees walking out with boxes.
- That moment Alice is informed that she is fired, a security guard hands her a box of her belongings and escorts her out of the building.
- Alice rolls out with a delivery cart stacked with several boxes.
- Downplayed:
- Alice has been slowly cleaning out her desk, but on the final day needs a small box to carry the rest of the stuff out.
- Alice is retiring — technically moving from a status of "full employment" to "unemployment." At the end of her last day at the office, she leaves the building with a box full of her desk's personal items.
- Justified: Alice needs something to carry her potted plant, family photos, desk lamp, coffee mug, and collection of kitten figurines she kept on her desk — after determining they won't fit in her purse, her lunchbox, or her pockets, she grabs an empty cardboard box from the supply closet.
- Inverted:
- Alice shows up to her first day of work carrying a box of personal items.
- Bob fires Alice, gives her a cardboard box, and tells her to put all the things she has that belong to Trope Co. into it.
- Subverted: Alice is shown packing her personal items into a box and carrying that box out of her cubicle — but it's revealed that she was just promoted, and she's moving into the corner office.
- Double Subverted: Alice keeps a box on her for both moving from cubicle to cubicle and for the occasion that she is fired.
- Parodied: Bob tells Alice she's fired, and presents her with a cardboard box made specifically for the occasion. He goes on about the merits of the box, infomercial style; the convenient handles, the double-wall construction, the stylish faux wood-grain finish. Alice gets an idea to start making and selling boxes specifically for workers who have just been fired.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice is fired from Trope Co. and leaves with a box of her personal items, only to walk across the street and immediately get hired by Trope Co.'s rival Eport Co.
- Averted:
- Alice is laid off, but she was expecting Trope Co. to downsize and has been emptying out her desk over the past few weeks. The only thing left on her desk is a family photo, which she tucks into her purse before leaving.
- Alice leaves all her personal items on her desk, not caring what happens to them.
- Enforced: The Alice Show is sponsored by a cardboard box manufacturer, and they force the writers to have Alice fired from her seemingly stable job so as to show her carrying one of their cardboard boxes.
- Lampshaded: Alice is fired from her job. She tells her disbelieving coworker Charlie, "Yes, Bob really did just fire me! See this box? It's full of all that stuff from my desk!"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited:
- Alice knows that Bob wants to fire her, but Bob can't fire anyone unless they've got a box to carry all their stuff out. Alice hides all the boxes in the office so that Bob can't fire her.
- Alice knows that Trope Co. is laying off 10% of its employees on Friday — she also knows that's when Bob will test a valuable prototype in his office. On Friday she sneaks into Trope Co., disguises herself as an employee, steals the prototype, hides it in a cardboard box, and walks out the door camouflaged by the dozens of other employees who have been laid off and their cardboard boxes.
- Defied: Alice walks into a meeting with her boss Bob, but she sees that he has an empty cardboard box with her name on it. She tells him, "If you think you can just up and fire me, you're wrong. I'm the only one who knows how to work the copy machine!" Bob is persuaded not to fire Alice.
- Discussed: Alice tells her coworker Charlie, "We're in real hot water with Bob over the last quarter's earnings. We'd better stash some cardboard boxes under our desks, in case he decides to fire us after this meeting."
- Conversed: Alice and Charlie talk about the movie they saw last night, and Alice remarks on how unrealistic it is that main character Adam could fit everything from his desk into a cardboard box after he was fired.
- Played for Laughs: We see some of Alice's personal effects and they look funny, they are incongruous for her personality, or both.
- Played for Drama:
- Bob makes Alice do a Shameful Strip, put her clothes in the box, and leave the building naked.
- The items Alice brought with her to Trope Co. remind her of key accomplishments at her job and she regrets not getting to do more of them.
Back to Cardboard Box of Unemployment
