Some of Annabelle's Favorite Fired! Stories from the Website

Hello  fellow firees: this story was sent to me by  talent manager Lee Kernis. The company Lee is an important part of, coincidentally, at one point represented Jeff Garlin who holds the record for " most jobs fired  from in a single summer" in the Fired book.  It's comforting to know that though Lee failed at selling hot dogs he has found success peddling actors and comedians- I'm sure the 2 fields are related in many ways that may or may not  have something to do with condiments:

I was 16 years old working at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. Actually at a store under the elevated train right across the street. My friend Gary's father Emmanuel Koeingsberg is the Manny of the legendary Manny's Baseball Land, which was the most successful retailer of all products with the Yankee logo. He sold flags, bobbing head dolls, signed baseballs, caps, t-shirts.. you name it.

We worked out front with an apron on and when a customer asked for a specific item, we would yell in to the store and a stockboy would send it flying out of the front door and we would collect the cash. A superfly looking pimp dressed in all orange with matching shoes and hat would show up in a new Eldorado and with a handful of 20's and buy hundreds of dollars of items for underprivledged kids.

On the days when my friend Gary asked too many friends to work at Manny's, invariably one teenager would have to work next door for his grandparents, which funny enough were his father's ex-inlaws, since Gary's parents were divorced. They owned a lunchenette, which basically had two things on the menu, hot dogs and hamburgers. They had a window counter to the street so people didn't have to venture into the aging store to get food.

One day, it was my turn to work for his grandparents dispensing nothing but hot dogs to pre-game and after-game patrons. I received about 2 seconds of training from Gary's grandfather, a man born in Russia, built like a pit-bull, who barked loudly "call'em out boys" as soon as anyone walked up to the window. The method was simple, you'd take the wax paper and bun in one swing, open it and insert the dog from the grill and hand it to the customer..someone else would grab the money. Relish and mustard was their responsibility on another counter. The pre-game wasn't bad; I had help and figured the rhythm and no one got hurt. What I didn't know was this was a double-header day, which meant that if you had your ticket stub, you could leave the stadium between games and come back in with your stub. The reason this was important was that people would go out of the stadium to get cheaper food, beer and souvenirs and then come back for the 2nd game.

I'd never been to Spain at this point, had never seen the bulls running at Pamplona.

All I can tell you as that as I heard the Yankee announcer in the stadium broadcast game's end, I heard a rumbling that can only be described as the sound of the R train coming into station but there was no train, it was parents and kids in a race to get to our window first, loud, snorting and winded.

There was no reason for "call 'em out boys"! People were screaming in staccato riffs...."DOG"! "DOG"! "DOG"! I tired to keep up but it was impossible. Men were grabbing hot dogs without wax paper out of my hands. It was all blurry, until I realized I was so caught up in trying to fill 6 orders at a time, I was literally slapping hot dogs in wax paper and giving them out without the buns. At that point I felt a huge body check and in seconds I wasn't in front of the grill anymore.

"Do you know any Yiddish?"...Gary's grandfather demanded of me an inch from my face. "Have you ever heard the word PUTZ, because you're a PUTZ!" I was stunned but relieved as he yelled at me to take my apron off and leave. I went next door and explained what happened to Manny who laughed and told me my career as a hot dog vendor was over.

For all you great people who’ve sent in Fired stories, I’ve gotten a little behind in posting new stories on the site, but the book has inspired contests with readers all over the country and I thought I’d post some of them right here! (Boston Herald Stories)

THE BOSTON HERALD
July 19, 2006 Wednesday

Wacky, weird, wild world of pink slips; Winners of Herald contest chime in
By Darren Garnick

I now have a taste of what it must be like to be a priest or a human resources manager.

Many of the job dismissal confessions that streamed into the Herald for this month's "You're Fired!" contest focused on employee wrongdoing that, quite frankly, deserved termination. Readers admitted to skipping work to go deep sea fishing, giving their boss the middle finger or carelessly losing important keys to their office. Others shared conspiracy theories claiming they were fired for their personalities, gender, intelligence or pregnancy.

The wackiest anonymous story chronicled the tale of a young German-born waitress, who claimed the owner of a posh Boston restaurant blamed her for World War II. The Herald DID NOT hear from any Serbian waitresses accused of assassinating Archduke Ferdinand to spark World War I.

Perhaps the most intriguing anecdotes were from guilt-ridden workers who expressed shock that they were not fired for what they did.

"Let's just say a large number of Chicken McNuggets went AWOL," confesses one former McDonald's employee. "Furthermore, if security cameras were in place, they would likely have captured footage clearly showing that Lexington High School students were routinely undercharged, and often got large fries even when ordering small fries."

There are real good causes for getting fired, such as having a tunnel collapse during your watch, and there are frivolous, ridiculous reasons.

Working Stiff sought the latter stories, inspired by actress Annabelle Gurwitch, who was fired by Woody Allen for "looking retarded" on stage.

Without further ado, here are the contest winners, who each will receive a copy of Gurwitch's new book, "Fired!: Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized & Dismissed."

** TOILET TENSION, Elizabeth Paulsen, Randolph:

I worked as an office manager for a real estate company in Hingham.

The owner fired me because I refused to change the toilet paper roll.

She felt that this and many other tasks (such as heating her lunch in the microwave) were beneath her. One day when the toilet paper was low she asked me to go in and change it so she could use the bathroom.

I ignored her order and was later informed by her attorney that I was being terminated for not fulfilling my duties. No other explanation was given. Talk about a pain in the rear!

** STOP TYPING, GRAB A SHOVEL!, Mike Mercurio, Cambridge:

I was working a customer service temp job a couple of years ago. It started to snow heavily and the roof began to leak. The owner walked around the office handing out shovels. He then told all of us clerical types that we needed to help shovel off the flat roof. I refused. He said, "See ya!"

** NOT A CHICKEN FINGER, Danielle Burnett, Salem:

I was 15 years old and Joan Crawford, my McDonald's shift manager, wanted the breakfast rush dishes done in less than a half hour. Why do they always want the dishes washed in less than a half hour? Have they ever done dishes that quick? My manager turned her back and I flipped her off. Only, she wasn't supposed to turn around right then. She wasn't supposed to actually see the salute. But see it she did. And home I was sent. The humorous part of the story is that I waited in the break room from 10 that morning until 4 that afternoon to plead my case to the big boss. He still sided with her.

** ACCOUNTING IN AN APRON, Heather MacIsaac, West Roxbury:

When I graduated college, I got a job as a bookkeeper in a restaurant at the Natick Mall. I was asked to help out waitressing if needed (which I agreed to because I figured the extra cash would be nice). My job soon turned into 10 hours a week of bookkeeping and 50 hours waitressing.

I stuck it out for a while, but the owner must have sensed my frustration, because he pulled me aside and told me he didn't like my attitude. I was fired.

About a month later, he called my house wanting to know why the spreadsheet I had been working on wasn't finished. I said it was because he had me working too many waitressing hours and not enough bookkeeping hours. He demanded that I come in and finish it. I told him that the bridge he said I burned went both ways.

** FRIDGE THEFT COVER-UP, Patty Capozzoli, Upton:

I was the manager of a surgical practice in the Metrowest area. The nurses and I used to put our lunch bags in the employee refrigerator every morning.

Many times I'd find my sandwich half-eaten, a bite in my apple or my can of soda cracked open. This became a game of cat and mouse. I wanted to know who was enjoying my lunch everyday, but I could never catch anyone, as I was working with about 50 employees.

One nurse found her Italian sub, still wrapped in the deli paper, with no meat or cheese inside. Just the soggy bread was left. So I began to hide my lunch in my filing cabinet. One day, I was called to an off-site meeting, but I returned to my office unexpectedly. I caught the head surgeon himself, with his face buried in my lunch! He was scarfing it down like a hungry animal.

I said "Ah ha!" And he said, "Do not tell a soul that I am the lunch stealer. Keep your mouth shut. And by the way, since you know too much now, you are fired."

I will never divulge the name of the surgeon, as he is quite well-known in Metrowest. But all of us health-care professionals who have eaten half-chewed sandwiches know who he is.

** HONORABLE MENTION, AQUARIUM FISH MURDERER, Derrek Shulman, Needham:

When I was 15 years old, I worked at an aquarium that sold tropical fish from tanks stacked in three vertical rows. My inglorious job was to clean these tanks with a sponge. At the time, I was 5'4" tall - too short to reach the top row. On this fateful day, I tip-toed on top of a step-stool, leaned a little too hard on a tank and dumped 20 gallons of warm water and several small, brightly colored fish into my lap.

Wanting to save their little lives, I began picking them up and tossing them into the nearest tank. At that moment, my boss came running and asked me what the hell I was doing.

Panicked, I was tossing the poor fish into a tank filled with hungry Oscars. Each fish whose life I had briefly saved ended up in the stomach of a large Oscar. My boss didn't let me clean up or apologize. He just pointed to the door and said "OUT!" When I came back for my last check, the cost of each devoured fish had been deducted from my pay.

Story: Ruth in Los Angeles:
I went to college and completed two bachelors of arts degrees in four years. When I was through, I had no idea what I wanted to do...I just knew I felt safe in that college town in Missouri. After three months of doing, well, nothing much, my mother decided I needed to find a job. She "strongly recommended" (read: "screamed, yelled, threatened, ranted, raved") I take the State Civil Service exam. I did, reluctantly, scored well, amazingly, and was hired by the Department of Family Services, immediately.

I hated the job from the beginning. Taking kids away from their parents because the parents didn't have running water in the house, well, that felt icky. Still, I was proud I had a job, with the state even (you can't get fired from those, right?).

Wrong.

Five months later, my home was raided by the police. My roommate had been storing marijuana in the house and we were arrested and held overnight. The headline in the local paper? "Social Worker Arrested in Drug Bust." Nevermind that I was just living in the house. Nevermind that my roommate was a small business owner. Nevermind anything other than "Social Worker Arrested in Drug Bust."

I can't really remember HOW I was fired, or even WHO fired me. I just remember being told that I no longer had a job. I remember thinking "Great, I'm 22, I have no job, no apartment, angry parents and a recent arrest on my record." I remember feeling really sorry for myself.

And then I realized that I would never again have a child scream "Welfare Lady, Welfare Lady" at me while I was out with friends.
If only I hadn't needed to get arrested to get fired.

Story:  Patrick in Georgia
I was hired to be a web producer at a company that did websites for banks. I actually didn't know what a web producer was when I was hired, but I figured out pretty quickly that it was best to look busy and send lots of emails.

The company was in the process of being bought out/acquired/purchased by a much larger company, and was expanding rapidly, so there was chaos all around me most of the time. I learned the first company's policies and procedures just in time to be told that everything I had just learned was no longer operable, but that's standard practice when this sort of thing happens, I suppose.

However. I had been at this company for about three months when my wife announced she was leaving me so that she could have more free time to stagger around drunk and use massive amounts of cocaine. Oddly, I missed her and became very sad for a very long time, despite what a terrible person she had been.

I became a bit of a zombie at work. I don't think I did much more than contemplate the window for a very long time. We were on the ninth floor. The window contemplation was not without moribund meditations about gravity and pavement.

The sudden tapering off of looking busy and sending emails did not escape the notice of my immediate superior, an odious little man with a perpetual soup stain on his life. I was given several official warnings and told that if my productivity (which I believe is the official name for looking busy and sending emails) did not rise, I would have several more meetings and several more warnings, followed by my eventual termination. Once I had determined that "termination" did not actually mean that they were going to kill me, I sat down to do the math: several more warnings, plus several more meetings meant at least three months of regular paychecks before I would be fired.

One thing that getting the cocaine dump out of one's life (and bank account) does, it really clears up the whole money situation, and suddenly, I had more money than I could spend.

I set out to have the least productive ninety days any human being has ever turned in at a job.

I was late. I took long lunches. I left early and I milked my leave time. I sent long emails to ex-girlfriends on company time. I hunted for odd items on eBay. I resisted actually being dragged into any sort of productive activity by doing something spectacularly wrong as early in the process as possible. For most of upper and middle management, I became radioactive. For most of the peons in the code pool (the people who actually do the work at a web company) I became a sort of hero, because I did not conceal my contempt for the people who made their lives into ceaseless and thankless drudgery.

I was called into meetings where my commitment to the company was questioned, and I made all the right noises until finally, one day, Soup Stain cornered me as I wandered in about thirty minutes late. He had his coterie of flunkies around him for support, and he snarled.... "You're late. You're thirty minutes late. Mind telling me why?"

"Sure," I said. "Because this job is mostly about meaningless paper-shuffling and ass-kissing, and I am losing my taste for both."

Oddly, this was met with no response whatsoever. No snappy comeback then, no meeting later that day. That bit of surliness was never addressed in any way. It still hasn't been. Needless to say, I decided to make it a part of my routine.

Finally, some time in mid-January, it was time for annual reviews, and I sat down with Soup Stain, and he told me if he didn't see some dramatic improvement in my attitude, they were going to have take some sort of action. I couldn't stand it any more. I finally asked him... "Don't you want to fire me?"

"Oh, I want to fire you, but I can't."

"Why not?"

"It'd be too much paperwork."

No shit. That's what he said. I said "Look. Just fire me. You'll be so much happier, and I can get on with my life."

It was like he was watching the sun rise somewhere over my shoulders, watching him contemplate life without me in it. He looked positively beatific, sort of soft and almost post-coital.

"You can do it, [Soup Stain], just fire me."

"Are you resigning?" he said, hopefully.

"No, you're gonna have to fire me. But you'll be a better man for it, once you have."

He finally did. It took about another week. Poor guy.

I went on to be the IT manager for a fairly famous rock band. Life is good. Met a new girl, too.

Yeah.

Story: SL Blackmer
I can tell you as someone who used to temp in an office years ago, I was terminated more than once and often not in the kindest way. Once got a voicemail from the agency after hours....and another time, one of my coworkers started taking things off my desk and started asking me where "I stood" on my assignments. It was hours later that the agency called me and told me that my assignment had ended. There's no wrongful termination of a temp. It's just assumed that they will come and go. I no longer temp.

Loved the book. Thank you for writing it. Wish I had read it when I was terminated from these positions years ago. Might have made me feel less alone and might have made me see the humor in the situation. I learned one lesson: all workers are expendable and can be asked to leave at any time. Knowing that, I always maintain an emergency fund that could last me at least six months, as well as make sure that I have plenty of interests and friends that have nothing to do with my job.