Ted blowed it up!

A recent conversation with my co-workers included the subject of layoffs and firings, being the oldest in the group I had the most stories to relate. Here is the funniest:

Working in a small advertising and design market, it is common to be laid off every three to five years as clients jumped ship and moved on. But on one occasion I was let go because I refused to fall on the sword and take the blame for the incompetence of the new marketing director.

I was working at a small research and consulting firm that catered to the IT industry. A year earlier the company had merged with another small firm on the east coast, the company kept both offices intact and had some duplicate positions. After this first year the marketing director in our Salt Lake office quit, he had had enough of the marketing director in the Virginia office. This left me exposed and now working directly with Little Napoleon--as we referred to him. On two occasions I was made aware of him trying to blame me for his costly screw-ups, who knows what else he blamed on me.

After speaking with the HR manager I met with Little Napoleon and tried to resolve our working relationship, boy was I naïve, he soon convinced upper management to fire me. I cleaned out my things and he escorted me out the door. The following day I called the IT director and asked permission to use a computer for transferring some personal data that I had on large file disks onto smaller disks that would work on my equipment at home. The IT director said it would be fine and when I arrived he just left me to my work. Napoleon saw me at the computer in the office and went ballistic, after an argument with the IT director, he permitted me to continue—but he first wanted to see everything on the disks and sat next to me until I completed my task. I was fuming! He walked me to my car, smiled, and put out his hand and wished me luck. I looked at his hand and said,“You’ve got to be kidding.”

A month earlier the office had put on its yearly conference at a luxury resort hotel in San Diego, CA. At the conference, amongst one of Little Napoleon’s many screw-ups, he misplaced the prizes that were to be given out to attendees in a drawing. A few months later the hotel staff discovered the missing box and mailed it to the Salt Lake office. The Salt Lake office forwarded it to Napoleon in the Virginia office--removing the hotel’s return address but forgetting to replace it with the Salt Lake return address. When Napoleon received it unannounced and thinking it was from me, he panicked and called the police claiming he had received a bomb in the mail.

A bomb squad’s policy is not to mess with it, first blow the thing up so one could safely examine the contents. After doing their job, they told Napoleon that it appeared to be some clothing. They had blown up ten bomber jackets--what irony.

Seeing the humor, I wanted to make a Christmas card that referenced the bombing incident. I thought better not to, Little Napoleon might see it and fire the person who called and related the incident to me.