You fired
What if I told you... I was... fired?
"Dear Joseph-Beth Booksellers,
While researching some writers online this weekend, I came across a myspace page for one of your employees in Pittsburgh. In his blog, he is openly complaining about his job and also about the wages. Further, that he is interesting in doing his current position just long enough to get this on his resume. In addition, you should be aware that he is bragging about shoplifting as a pasttime of his. I am pasting in some of it below.
After looking around some more, there are more! Someone at your Cincinnati location (Matthew?) is bragging about how lazy he can be at his job and also has complaints about ACTUAL CUSTOMERS in some of his blogs! This is shocking.
I really love your store(s) and felt compelled to share this with you out of concern for your company's reputation. It is really a poor relection on the quality of your employees, who I have always held as outstanding in their field.
With regards,
A Longtime Customer
Heee. Well, shit, ya got me. I wonder if any involved party is reading this, now?
Ahaha... oh wow. I'm very tempted to thank/blame someone who posted some rather confrontational anonymous responses to a couple of my Livejournal entries awhile back of a similar nature.
Personally, I'm not terribly dismayed, but I am furious at the customer in question. Granted, this termination doesn't affect me directly in a terrible way (ie, I'm a privileged middle-class child on good terms with his parents), but the customer who sent the email didn't necessarily know that. For all he or she knew, this could have put me on the streets, and for what? How about whoever that poor 'Matthew' kid is up there? I hope he's not going to be totally fucked over.
I think what I mean to say is that the author of that email is a noxious cunt with an overinflated ego and horrifically distorted sense of justice where his/her life is so menial and petty that this is all that can muster as a dignified, moral act.
Or maybe just a 'tattletale.'
This whole thing came as a pretty comical surprise to me today: I had spent the first five and a half break-less hours of my shift running inventory reports and coming up with ideas for the reorganization scheme I had running in the reference area. Anthony's been out for the week, so in his absence, I had sent him handfuls of emails detailing my plans since I'm not... er... was not... at the stage where I had total operating freedom, so I would always confer with him first. Yesterday and today were both pretty decent days, actually, as it felt like I had finally gotten my feet wet.
In any case, I had my break at 2. I spent the first half absent-mindedly munching on a bagel at Crazy Mocha, and returned to the store about half-hour later to read in the break room. I walked through the door and sure enough, saw Anthony standing there: I hadn't seen him in a week or so, so I smiled and waved, and he waved back. I was on break, I'll talk to him afterwards, I thought.
So, I go into the breakroom, plop down a buck on a couple tiny bags of sourdough nibblets (even sounds disgusting, hm?) and get to munching away, reading all about the history of the Greek alphabet and how it, as a culture, was distinguished from the early Israelites, when in come Anthony with a blue folder, and Liz by his side. He closes the door behind him, and says "Okay, sir, we need to chat."
My initial thought was that that sounded hostile, but given his generally intense-sounding predisposition, I didn't think anything of it, and responded "Okay," figuring that he was talking about the ideas I had for the reference area. Though, I was a bit flattered by the folder. Oooh, this project deserves a folder?
He sat down quickly, opened the folder, and with all the finesse of a card dealer, he slid the letter of termination across to me just as he said "We're going to have to let you go." This sort of confused me immediately, and my mind raced to try and figure out just... um... why? I sort of mentally surveyed any past wrongdoings, whether I did anything that was enough of an affront to warrant termination. Here, I thought I was just a meek, little, quiet, shy kid who was insecure and overly polite. I panicked for about two seconds at the possibilities.
Then I saw, sticking out of the corner of the folder, a quick image of my old Livejournal profile pic. Ohhhhh. The fact that it was my old one sort of unnerves me because I realize that he must have been doing his homework for at least a couple of weeks now, which would explain what I interpreted as indifferent hostility on his part. I also wonder how many other people knew about this?
Well, as demonstrated above, he apparently got an email from a 'customer,' who basically... um... "told on me," I guess is the appropriate vernacular. Again, my mind raced: I knew that towards the beginning of my employment, I said some fairly hostile things because of my plans at the time. Backed into the corner of being in a house with slobs and unable to pay the rent, I had planned to just quit and hit the road. This later changed, and I buckled down, and while I maintained some sort of happiness with my specific position, only talked about the general malaise of employment in GENERAL. So, I think I said some harsh things about Anthony, etc, because, you know, I was spiteful and don't mince words when writing.
Actually, though, what really got me fired, or at least, the only reason that I allowed to manifest before out of bemused embarassment, I acknowledged the validity of the complaint and tried to rush this thing to its end, was because I admitted to being at work for some four hours 'blogging.' Actually, all I was doing was standing at the computer, doing research, and occasionally writing down ideas in an email to myself and mailing it off, but like I said, I don't think that'd help much. I looked at the folder he had. He had clearly done a lot of research. He slid across pages from the employee standards manual, with passages about using computers only for business use, yadda yadda (though I never did navigate to any blog on the clock, but again, mincing words), and I saw that the stack of paper that he had was extensive enough where he could humiliate me further if he so chose, so I just said "Yeah, I don't really have any excuses. I understand. I'm sorry. It was a mistake, and I understand."
When I asked if it was effective immediately, I nodded, stood up, shook his hand, shook Liz's hand, grabbed my bag, and left. I was sort of nervous about encountering other employees, all of whom I now realize I'll never see again.
I sort of think the reasons given were sketchy and inconclusive, but based on the folder size, I believe that there could have been any number of valid reasons, so why bother.
Hahahahaha... oh this is priceless. I'm glad I didn't buy that iPod yesterday. :)
If you've been reading this journal at all the last few weeks, you might even interpret this as a sign. Serendipitous. Synchronicitous! The question is, of course... now what? I guess I should seek employment again, lest I turn into even more of a leech off of my parents' cash. I'm sort of harboring the idea that I'm still young enough that I'd normally be in college and living at home, so I'm not feeling the guilt over that too deeply. But this does sort of put a crimp in my plans for independence, doesn't it? At least for now.
Oooh, and one of the first things I thought of was this.
*taps foot*
I'm glad I still have that little wad o' cash in my bank account. The way I spent money, this last paycheck could technically last for months.
"Dear Joseph-Beth Booksellers,
While researching some writers online this weekend, I came across a myspace page for one of your employees in Pittsburgh. In his blog, he is openly complaining about his job and also about the wages. Further, that he is interesting in doing his current position just long enough to get this on his resume. In addition, you should be aware that he is bragging about shoplifting as a pasttime of his. I am pasting in some of it below.
After looking around some more, there are more! Someone at your Cincinnati location (Matthew?) is bragging about how lazy he can be at his job and also has complaints about ACTUAL CUSTOMERS in some of his blogs! This is shocking.
I really love your store(s) and felt compelled to share this with you out of concern for your company's reputation. It is really a poor relection on the quality of your employees, who I have always held as outstanding in their field.
With regards,
A Longtime Customer
Heee. Well, shit, ya got me. I wonder if any involved party is reading this, now?
Ahaha... oh wow. I'm very tempted to thank/blame someone who posted some rather confrontational anonymous responses to a couple of my Livejournal entries awhile back of a similar nature.
Personally, I'm not terribly dismayed, but I am furious at the customer in question. Granted, this termination doesn't affect me directly in a terrible way (ie, I'm a privileged middle-class child on good terms with his parents), but the customer who sent the email didn't necessarily know that. For all he or she knew, this could have put me on the streets, and for what? How about whoever that poor 'Matthew' kid is up there? I hope he's not going to be totally fucked over.
I think what I mean to say is that the author of that email is a noxious cunt with an overinflated ego and horrifically distorted sense of justice where his/her life is so menial and petty that this is all that can muster as a dignified, moral act.
Or maybe just a 'tattletale.'
This whole thing came as a pretty comical surprise to me today: I had spent the first five and a half break-less hours of my shift running inventory reports and coming up with ideas for the reorganization scheme I had running in the reference area. Anthony's been out for the week, so in his absence, I had sent him handfuls of emails detailing my plans since I'm not... er... was not... at the stage where I had total operating freedom, so I would always confer with him first. Yesterday and today were both pretty decent days, actually, as it felt like I had finally gotten my feet wet.
In any case, I had my break at 2. I spent the first half absent-mindedly munching on a bagel at Crazy Mocha, and returned to the store about half-hour later to read in the break room. I walked through the door and sure enough, saw Anthony standing there: I hadn't seen him in a week or so, so I smiled and waved, and he waved back. I was on break, I'll talk to him afterwards, I thought.
So, I go into the breakroom, plop down a buck on a couple tiny bags of sourdough nibblets (even sounds disgusting, hm?) and get to munching away, reading all about the history of the Greek alphabet and how it, as a culture, was distinguished from the early Israelites, when in come Anthony with a blue folder, and Liz by his side. He closes the door behind him, and says "Okay, sir, we need to chat."
My initial thought was that that sounded hostile, but given his generally intense-sounding predisposition, I didn't think anything of it, and responded "Okay," figuring that he was talking about the ideas I had for the reference area. Though, I was a bit flattered by the folder. Oooh, this project deserves a folder?
He sat down quickly, opened the folder, and with all the finesse of a card dealer, he slid the letter of termination across to me just as he said "We're going to have to let you go." This sort of confused me immediately, and my mind raced to try and figure out just... um... why? I sort of mentally surveyed any past wrongdoings, whether I did anything that was enough of an affront to warrant termination. Here, I thought I was just a meek, little, quiet, shy kid who was insecure and overly polite. I panicked for about two seconds at the possibilities.
Then I saw, sticking out of the corner of the folder, a quick image of my old Livejournal profile pic. Ohhhhh. The fact that it was my old one sort of unnerves me because I realize that he must have been doing his homework for at least a couple of weeks now, which would explain what I interpreted as indifferent hostility on his part. I also wonder how many other people knew about this?
Well, as demonstrated above, he apparently got an email from a 'customer,' who basically... um... "told on me," I guess is the appropriate vernacular. Again, my mind raced: I knew that towards the beginning of my employment, I said some fairly hostile things because of my plans at the time. Backed into the corner of being in a house with slobs and unable to pay the rent, I had planned to just quit and hit the road. This later changed, and I buckled down, and while I maintained some sort of happiness with my specific position, only talked about the general malaise of employment in GENERAL. So, I think I said some harsh things about Anthony, etc, because, you know, I was spiteful and don't mince words when writing.
Actually, though, what really got me fired, or at least, the only reason that I allowed to manifest before out of bemused embarassment, I acknowledged the validity of the complaint and tried to rush this thing to its end, was because I admitted to being at work for some four hours 'blogging.' Actually, all I was doing was standing at the computer, doing research, and occasionally writing down ideas in an email to myself and mailing it off, but like I said, I don't think that'd help much. I looked at the folder he had. He had clearly done a lot of research. He slid across pages from the employee standards manual, with passages about using computers only for business use, yadda yadda (though I never did navigate to any blog on the clock, but again, mincing words), and I saw that the stack of paper that he had was extensive enough where he could humiliate me further if he so chose, so I just said "Yeah, I don't really have any excuses. I understand. I'm sorry. It was a mistake, and I understand."
When I asked if it was effective immediately, I nodded, stood up, shook his hand, shook Liz's hand, grabbed my bag, and left. I was sort of nervous about encountering other employees, all of whom I now realize I'll never see again.
I sort of think the reasons given were sketchy and inconclusive, but based on the folder size, I believe that there could have been any number of valid reasons, so why bother.
Hahahahaha... oh this is priceless. I'm glad I didn't buy that iPod yesterday. :)
If you've been reading this journal at all the last few weeks, you might even interpret this as a sign. Serendipitous. Synchronicitous! The question is, of course... now what? I guess I should seek employment again, lest I turn into even more of a leech off of my parents' cash. I'm sort of harboring the idea that I'm still young enough that I'd normally be in college and living at home, so I'm not feeling the guilt over that too deeply. But this does sort of put a crimp in my plans for independence, doesn't it? At least for now.
Oooh, and one of the first things I thought of was this.
*taps foot*
I'm glad I still have that little wad o' cash in my bank account. The way I spent money, this last paycheck could technically last for months.