Signs: How to tell you're about to be fired:

Brian Unger's dismissal from hosting TV's 'Extra!' sounds like a death from a thousand cutting memos. 'No more sweaters, if he wants to keep his job' was an early one. Then came complaints about his makeup, prompting a distressing slow-motion makeover. 'My look began wasting away,' Mr. Unger remembers, 'devouring itself like a planeload of soccer players stranded in the Andes. Word came down again. This time--my hair.' Finally there is one last thing to change--'my immediate presence.' He was canned just before Christmas.

That must have hurt.