Take this job and shove it

Having a Johnny Paycheck moment?

Try to resist.

Because if you snap, like the JetBlue flight attendant who cussed out a passenger, grabbed a beer and slid out the emergency chute Monday, you may find re-entry into the job market difficult.

“This individual has just shown us how not to exit gracefully,” said Atlanta-based Andy Decker, senior regional vice president of personnel placement firm Robert Half International.

"I would say this person’s going to have a hard time getting rehired," said Monty Grubb, an industrial psychologist who works with businesses in high-stress fields, including nuclear power plants and emergency rooms.

Flight attendants certainly fit that bill. Both they and their passengers have become more stressed over the last 10 years, as demands on each have increased.

Atlantan Mary Mac Saunders never saw a flight attendant quit mid-flight during the years in the 1960s that she worked as a "stewardess," as she was called, "but people are not as nice today as they were then."

There was also an explicit policy back then that the passenger was always right. Today, said Saunders, the passenger is sometimes very wrong. Frequently it's up to the flight attendant to determine the difference, which adds more stress.

The JetBlue attendant, Steven Slater, has been arrested and charged with reckless endangerment, because the emergency chutes open with such force that they can injure a worker on the ground.

But he’s also become an instant online folk hero for doing what many dream of — making a dramatic exit. A Facebook page in his honor has had 39,000 fans, some working to raise a defense fund.

Plenty of folks can empathize with the character in the Johnny Paycheck song who says "I ain't working here no more," though in shaky economic times, few might take such a step.

Chive.com tells the story of an assistant at an office who quit, delivering a parting speech on a dry erase board. Among the revelations that she emailed to co-workers: her boss wasted 19.7 hours a week on Farmville.