I’m really digging the new blog Please Fire Me. It’s a simple enough premise: users submit reasons why they’d like to be fired. However, the reasons are about how much their companies/bosses suck, not about something the employee did. And, as any savvy assistant knows, being fired is way better than quitting, because then you get unemployment benefits! Here are a couple of my faves below:
Please fire me. I have to share my workspace with the mistress of the boss. So she thinks she’s the queen of the company and she definitely can’t do anything wrong in the boss’s eyes. And that leaves the rest of us in the office treated like dirt. So please fire me!
Please fire me. I had no idea I’d have to spend hours every day photocopying entire textbooks because you are too cheap to buy extra copies.
Please fire me. I just spent 20 minutes on the phone with your OBGYN picking a birth control that is “better suited” to your body.
Please fire me. I think I just helped my boss cover up a drunk driving hit and run with a mailbox.
And there’s more where that came from.
Les Moonves - head of CBS and husband of Big Brother host Julie Chen - announced today that CBS was cancelling As The World Turns, the network’s last remaining soap opera, just months after industry stalwart Guiding Light went off the air for good. Besides fans of the show, Moonves managed to tick off one very important person - CNBC’s David Faber, who was interviewing him when he dropped the cancellation news. Why might Faber be upset? Probably because his mother-in-law, Marie Masters (pictured), plays a recurring role on the show. HARSH.
From Gawker:
At the end of the (boring) interview about ad spending and stupid business things, Faber couldn’t help but ask about the show getting dropped (do you think he could go home tonight if he didn’t?). Moonves said, “The days of the soap opera have changed very much. Guiding Light left earlier this year and As the World Turns will leave later next year. They’ve had long and distinguished runs and their days are over.” Burn! The saddest thing is, he says it with a bit of a smirk.
Nothing like telling a guy his mother-in-law is a dinosaur on live TV. Faber didn’t make much of a reaction on-air, but what he told Moonves when the cameras turned off probably depends on how he feels about his mother-in-law.
I can only imagine what their next family dinner is going to be like.
Taylor, the peroxide-haired “senior assistant” who seemed to hate her boss Rachel Zoe, has been fired. There was no reason offered by either Rachel or Taylor (who Ashley likes to refer to as “the awesomely bitchy one”). Along with Rachel and fellow assistant Brad, Taylor was one of the stars of The Rachel Zoe Project on Bravo, which just finished airing its second season. Today, Taylor emailed all her contacts the following note:
After four amazing years at Rachel Zoe Corporation, I’m saddened and exhilarated at the same time to announce my departure. After much thought and consideration, I have decided to take the challenging leap to go off and style on my own.
After the jump, let’s revisit some of Taylor’s finest (and most disgruntled) moments.
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I have heard of some pretty damn stupid reasons for getting fired, but this one is up there on the top ten list.
A German secretary, 59-year-old Magdalene, was charged with putting together a buffet of food for her boss and some of his guests. After setting up, she ate a frikadelle (a kind of German meatball, apparently) and two halves of a roll that she had made into an ersatz sandwich. After another employee reported her, she was fired.
Let’s see both sides of the story, shall we? First up, Magdalene’s lawyer:
“She was of the opinion that her behavior was acceptable,” said her lawyer Wolfgang Pinkepank. “Bread rolls and burgers left over after conferences are always given to employees to eat.” Magdalene had taken the sandwich beforehand, succumbing to a hunger pang.
And now, the company’s official response:
“Outwardly this of course seems like a trifling matter,” the company’s managing director, Hermann Schulte-Hiltrop, told Bild [a German newspaper]. “This is a highly sensitive case. When you lose your trust in someone you are left with a bad feeling.”
In case there was any confusion on this matter, I’m Team Magdalene.
In this economy, it’s more and more common for people to take on second jobs or side gigs in order to make ends meet. One such man, Niclas Nilsson of Sweden, spent his days working at a personal care staffing agency. However, the schedule was somewhat erratic, and while Niclas loved his job he needed some additional income. He found an internship at a porn store called Erotic Video, which purports to have “northern Sweden’s largest selection of erotic films and sex toys.” Though Niclas only worked behind the counter and didn’t engage in any illicit activities, when word of his side gig got out he was let go from his first job.
Nilsson doesn’t see the problem with splitting his time between caring for the elderly and collecting cash from people paying for pornography.
“There’s nothing inappropriate about it as long as I keep the two separate. It was just something on the side, and as long as I was doing my other job well, I don’t think it should matter what I do in my personal time,” he said.
The father of three said he considers his boss’s handling of the matter “very unprofessional.”
Do you agree with Niclas, or do you think his boss was in the right?
I hereby apologize for not being able to resist that headline.
Employees at a pizza-making plant in Ireland recently landed themselves in hot water after viewing porn at work. However, the workers argue that their firings weren’t about porn as much as they were about revenge. They and other members of their union are now planning a protest at the factory, which is located in County Kildare.
The company said three workers lost their jobs after viewing “adult material” and breaching the company’s internet policy. But their union claims they are being scapegoated.
“One of our members received an email from outside the plant and was essentially dismissed for receiving an email,” said TEEU general secretary designate, Eamon Devoy.
Over 40 workers went on strike last month after the workers lost their jobs.
The TEEU said the sackings were linked to a separate incident when the company sent a confidential file about seven redundancies to a worker by mistake.
Sounds suspicious to me, all right. Although perhaps this is a good time to remind everyone to keep their porn-viewing habits confined to the comfort of your own bedrooms.
Having an evil boss doesn’t just hurt morale and your will to live - it’s also bad for the economy. A new study from USC’s School of Business finds that bad bosses cost the US economy about $300 billion a year. That is a lot of money. Where does it come from?
- Lawsuits - wrongful termination, harassment, creating a hostile work environment… you name it.
- Lost productivity - people bitching about their bosses, hiding from them, crying in the bathroom, etc., instead of working
- Retention/hirings and firings - employees are more likely to leave jobs with unpleasant working environments (note: the Evil Empire went through about ten assistants a year. That is a lot of time devoted to reading resumes, arranging interviews, making offers, training new people, and the like.)
- Morale - not just unhappy employees, but if clients, vendors, or customers get wind of how unhappy a place is for workers, they are 80 percent less likely to continue their business there
In other words, you now have a really strong case for getting your boss fired. Good luck!
While the internet is kind of like the Wild West in terms of what’s allowed and what’s not, there is one rule I think everyone can agree on: don’t use all caps. IT LOOKS LIKE YELLING. Anyway, one company decided not only to take a firm stance against all-caps, but to show no mercy to people who wrote that way. Vicki Walker, an employee of ProCare Health in New Zealand, was let go from her job after sending out an all-staff email written with the caps lock key on.
Walker sued ProCare for wrongful dismissal, and won, getting a settlement. Though her email annoyed coworkers, she pointed out that ProCare did not have an approved company style guide. Even though her all-caps bothered people, there was no specific protocol on how emails were supposed to look. I’m sure that was ProCare’s #1 agenda item as soon as the lawsuit ended.
Do you think an all-caps email is a good reason to fire someone? I’d say no, but five or six in a row from the same person might convince me otherwise.
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be on the other side of a firing or layoff? One of the downsides to being a boss is having to let people go, especially when it’s not because they deserve it. Well, now The Washington Post introduces you to “The Five O’Clock Club” - an “outplacement” firm. What, you may ask, is outplacement? It’s a corporate buzzword for laying people off. And companies like The Five O’Clock Club (which I’ll call T5OCC) come in to help companies figure out which people to lay off and how.
While the point of this article is probably to help people - especially ones who lost their jobs recently and are pissed about it - sympathize with what it’s like to be the layer-offer, it doesn’t do much to humanize the characters. Having employees of T5OCC spout off lists of names and numbers - six here, 20 there - doesn’t make me feel sorry for them. If anything, it makes them look like vultures, who are surviving by feeding off of the dying. Take paragraphs like this, for example:
The Five O’Clock Club has nearly doubled in size during the past two years, and Hall has guided more than 200 companies and 1,500 laid-off workers through downsizings in the past six months. The Club, as it is sometimes called, charges each company about $2,000 per fired employee in exchange for providing layoff victims with a year of career coaching. The more businesses that suffer, the better for business at the Club. When Hall joined the company in 2007, she read in the employee handbook that “from time to time, employees will receive small bonuses when the company is doing exceptionally well.” Now those bonuses come almost every month.
Maybe I should reward these people for their business acumen, but all I feel like doing is being mad that they exist in the first place.
Kendra was always my favorite “Girl Next Door,” despite her braying laugh, because she seemed to be the only one not playing a weird role or speaking forced dialogue for the cameras. Now, Kendra has her own spinoff that details her marriage to football player Hank Baskett and her impending motherhood. So what happens when you become big enough to get your own self-titled reality show? You get an assistant, of course.
Rather than go through the process of interviewing people, Kendra hired her brother’s girlfriend Maranie to be her PA. However, while Kendra liked Maranie’s good attitude and organizational skills, she didn’t really know how to be an assistant. Kendra, as far as I can tell, didn’t put a lot of effort into training Maranie, although she did ask for very specific things, so Maranie at least had something to go on. However, the relationship didn’t last very long - Maranie made it about three episodes before Kendra fired her for not helping out enough when Kendra prepared a big dinner for some of Hank’s teammates and their spouses.
It seems like Maranie is still dating Kendra’s brother, though - perhaps they could have called Bethany Hamilton and asked for her advice about keeping assistants in the family?