Tuesday, September 06, 2005

And Now, A Quick Break from Misery and Pain

I think we could all use a laugh, a brief escape from the endless messages of death, destruction and despair. So let's be grateful that we have the opportunity, and take it.

Besides, this is some plump, juicy, low-hanging humor fruit.

Jim Garrison was fired for eating pizza.

That's right. Garrison, 39, won an internet contest seeking stories about outrageous firings. He won a Caribbean cruise for this account of his firing:

I had been working for a mortgage company as a developer for 18 months and things were going well. Then, one day I saw that a different group in my company had just finished up a pot-luck and had some pizza left over. I thought they would probably end up throwing it away and I was kind of hungry so I went for it ... I took a slice of pizza.

Apparently the employees who threw this pot luck were planning to take it home and were offended by my action. Now I thought we were all basically on the same team and if someone didn't like what I did they would tell me so and I would apologize and maybe offer to pay for the pizza. These employees ended up telling their manager, who told her vice president about what I did.

The worst part about this is that I wasn't told about any of this until a month after the incident. No warning, no second chance.

I know that I left an impression because to this day my former coworkers refer to unattended pizza as "programmer bait".

As funny as this is, I think my favorite story was the runner-up who delivered furniture for a living. He and his co-worker found a large stash of sex toys under a bed they were moving and began, uh, fencing with them. Worst part about this? He worked for his Dad, who had to fire him.

Go here to see the list of winners.