Courtney Love certainly has a taste for the macabre when it comes to art and decor. (This is the woman who put late husband Kurt Cobain’s ashes in a teddy bear, after all.) Now, the star, who sometimes has trouble finding assistants, reportedly flipped out on her assistant when a piece of art was thrown out during a move. The art, a dead bird inside a matchbox (it apparently cost £8,000) got tossed like a piece of trash while movers took stuff out of Courtney’s house. Courtney was apparently so upset about the loss of the precious piece of art that, rather than fire the movers for actually chucking the thing in the garbage, she blamed her assistant for not looking after the piece closely enough and then fired her.
Hey, Courtney, one time I found a dead pigeon on my stoop. I’m pretty sure it got killed by some feral cats in the neighborhood. I’ll give it to you for a bargain – just £7,000. It’s a steal! I’ll even throw the matchbox in for free!
Gawker.com is reporting that publishing behemoth Conde Nast (home to Vogue, Vanity Fair, and other illustrious titles) is laying off almost all of their receptionists.
Tipsters tell us that the receptionists—who sit on each floor to greet and announce visitors, receive packages, and answer phones—will have their last day on Friday. Sad! They’re naturally some of the most popular people in the building, being the only ones with a professional obligation to smile at everyone and act civil and useful.
On top of that, this move is probably a part of CEO Charles Townsend’s latest round of company-wide cutbacks, but it can’t be saving Conde that much money—the receptionists are some of the lowest-paid (if not the lowest-paid) people in the whole building.
Sounds like a sad day over at Conde Nast – just last month they tightened the budgets of already-overworked assistants. If you’re one of the laid off receptionists and want to share your story, email me at contact@savetheassistants.com. I wonder why it is that the people who get fired are always the underpaid admins, not the overpaid executives whose bad business decisions got the company in trouble in the first place?
I’ve heard about workers allegedly being fired for being a vegetarian or wearing too much perfume, but a man in Queens, New York may have them all beat – he was allegedly fired because of a tuna sandwich. Ralph Reese, 57, was working in the deli section of the enormous Whole Foods outpost in Union Square. He was fired from his job after he allegedly grabbed an uneaten, still-wrapped tuna sandwich out of the trash at the store. Reese claims that he set the sandwich aside for himself, but that his supervisor threw it away. Whole Foods claims that their store policy is that employees do not get free food – they get a 20 percent store discount, and they’re allowed to try free samples as long as they check with their supervisor and the amount they eat is logged. (Seriously?) Now, the story is hitting the big time as Reese tries to sue his former employer for unemployment benefits.
Elizabeth A. Shollenberger, director of government benefits and consumer law for Queens Legal Services, said that in the last six months her office had seen an uptick of cases like Mr. Reese’s, in which unemployment claims were being challenged. It is a phenomenon happening not only in New York, but also across the country. “A lot more people are getting fired for very minor reasons,” said Ms. Shollenberger, who represented Mr. Reese.
“What we are seeing is that they are firing people for ‘misconduct’ when what they are really doing is downsizing and it’s an attempt to not pay benefits,” she said.
Last year, she said, her office was seeing three or four such cases a week. Now she estimated that they are seeing 15 to 20 cases a week, 80 percent of which she says have merit. (Nationwide, employees win in two-thirds of the cases.)
Jessica Simpson confuses tuna with chicken and becomes a TV star. This guy tries to set aside a tuna sandwich for himself and gets fired? Were they afraid of him getting “mercury poisoning” a la Jeremy Piven?
It seems to be a day for creative pursuits here at STA. Witness this poem submitted by STA reader Chloe in New York:
IT HAS TO BE A FIRING
my boss is back
from maternity leave
i was there basically the entire time she was gone
my paychecks are bouncing
there’s no way they need me or can afford to pay me
so my boss calls me to meet on bedford at noon or 1
and my shift starts at 2
i think it’s a firing
Note: Chloe wrote back to tell us she was, indeed, fired. Perhaps it’s time to pursue that poetry career?
