We used to have dogs and cats when I grew up.
The cats were always “outside” cats, and were allowed to freely roam about. We would feed them under the kitchen porch, and the cats would “hang out” on the kitchen window. I never really understood why, but now I know. It wasn’t so much that it wanted to be inside the house, but more about wanting to socialize with us; it’s adopted family.
My dogs stayed in the fenced-in back yard.
My older dog was well behaved, and just simply stayed inside the yard. never, ever trying to leave or run outside. Though, from time to time, one of the other kids (of my family or others) would leave the gate open and my dog would run out and run off.
Though the younger dog wasn’t so well behaved. It was always digging holes just about everywhere, and most of them were under the fence. That darn silly dog was always getting out, and I… well, I was the poor kid that had to go out, chase after the dog and haul it back home.
Well, after about a ton-load of escapes, my father made up a pen. This was a chicken wire box with a dog house inside of it. And there, we placed this younger dog. And you know, for the most part, the escapes ended.
However, while I no longer had to chase after the dog…. I now had to clean up the pen. And oh Lordy did it stink. I would need to use a pitch fork to remove the hay (we lined it with hay) and feces mess, and then hose it down. What a stinky mess. Especially in the hot Summer. Ugh!
So here’s my point. That smaller and younger dog was not “my” dog. It was my (very lazy) sister’s. And I had to take on HER responsibility. Why? Well, my father said so. Because… (now get this)… because I was a boy, and that men take on the responsibility for the family. And that the women of the family will note this role and will appreciate what I do.
Yeah. It was in the 1960’s. Everyone thought differently back then.
So, let’s discuss this point. If you have a pet, you must take care of it. And do not whine, beg and promise, if you are unable to take on that responsibility. And if you have a child that follows this pattern of sloth, you must teach the child that responsibility is important, and requires labor.
Ok, I’m gonna get off my “soapbox” now.
Just be kind and good to dogs and cats, and NEVER, EVER take on a pet if you yourself are unwilling to care for it. You buy it, you take care of it.
God Bless our little friends.
Today…
30 Years Ago, This Movie Explained Why Men Are SNAPPING Today | Falling Down
Pretty good, all things told.
What the depression was like…
November 1938. “Home of rural rehabilitation client, Tulare County, California. They bought 20 acres of raw unimproved land with a first payment of 50 dollars which was money saved out of relief budget (August 1936). They received a Farm Security Administration loan of $700 for stock and equipment. Now they have a one-room shack, seven cows, three sows, and homemade pumping plant, along with 10 acres of improved permanent pasture. Cream check approximately 30 dollars per month. Husband also works about ten days a month outside the farm. Husband is 26 years old, wife 22, three small children. Been in California five years. ‘Piece by piece this place gets put together. One more piece of pipe and our water tank will be finished’.” Medium format negative by Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
The Final Examination
Written in response to: “Write a story that has a big twist.“
Denise Walker
He positioned the scalpel at the center of the sternum, the cool metal gleaming under the harsh overhead light. With a steady hand, he applied pressure, expecting the familiar resistance of flesh yielding beneath the blade.
But instead of cutting, the scalpel glided effortlessly over the skin as if skimming across glass. Dr. Grayson’s brow furrowed. No matter how much force he applied, the blade refused to break the surface, as though an invisible barrier shielded the body from harm.
His heartbeat quickened. He had cut through bone, cartilage, and flesh countless times, but this was different. Frowning, he switched blades, assuming the first was dull, and pressed down again. Still nothing. No give. No incision. It was as if the body refused to be opened.
He set the scalpel down and leaned in, his breath fogging the strangely smooth skin of the body. He reached out and pressed his fingers against the man’s arm. The flesh felt ice-cold and unyielding, as if he were touching something inorganic. A chill ran down his spine.
His gloved hands moved to the man’s face. He pried open the eyelids—
And stumbled back with a sharp gasp.
The eyes were black. Not just the irises—all of it. Deep, endless pools of obsidian. No whites, no pupils, just voids of ink that swallowed the light.
“What the hell!”
Dr. Grayson had encountered many horrors on his table, but this? This wasn’t right. He steadied his breathing, forcing himself to focus. Science had the answer. He needed to find them.
“Further analysis required,” he muttered, returning to his tools.
He reached for the bone saw, intent on examining the skull. If he couldn’t cut through the flesh, the bone might have a different result. The sudden high-pitched whine filled the sterile room as he powered on the saw. He pressed it against the forehead.
The room shifted.
Not physically. No walls moved, no objects stirred. But something—somewhere—changed. The very air thickened, humming with an electric charge. Dr. Grayson’s ears popped like he had ascended too high in an airplane. A pressure bore down on him, something unseen, something vast and watching.
The saw stopped. The lights flickered.
His breath hitched. He turned to the tray beside him—to the recorder. His fingers trembled as he reached for it.
“Unexpected resistance to standard incisions,” he whispered. “No reaction to—”
The body twitched.
A violent, jerking spasm, like a marionette pulled by unseen strings.
Dr. Grayson dropped the recorder. The device clattered to the ground, its microphone capturing his ragged breathing. His instincts screamed at him to leave, but his rational mind—the part that had dissected a thousand corpses without fear—kept him rooted in place.
Then, the corpse sat up.
A sound, low and unnatural, gurgled from its throat. It wasn’t a moan or a breath—a vibration, like something trying to speak in a language no human tongue could form.
The black voids of its eyes turned to him.
“Impossible…” he whispered, stumbling back.
Then, the surrounding walls melted.
The morgue dissolved, like paint washed from a canvas. Cold steel gave way to something organic, pulsating, and wet. The lights above warped, elongating into bioluminescent tendrils that throbbed with an eerie green glow. The air reeked of ammonia and a chemical odour.
Dr. Grayson gasped, clutching his head as a sharp, piercing noise filled his skull. The room—the ship—solidified around him.
The autopsy table was gone.
And he was the one lying down.
Restrained.
The instruments he had just wielded were now floating above him, but they were no longer his trade’s familiar stainless steel tools. They were aliens. Elongated, shifting, almost alive.
He thrashed, his body sluggish as though submerged in a thick liquid.
Panic clawed up his throat. He turned his head to the side and saw them.
Silhouettes — tall, impossibly thin, with too many joints, too many fingers. Their black eyes—like the ones he had just examined—glowed with something that wasn’t human.
A voice, though not spoken, entered his mind.
Subject self-aware. Start sedation.
“No!” Dr. Grayson tried to scream, but the thick air swallowed his voice. Something pressed against his forehead, sending a ripple of unnatural warmth through his skull.
Fractured and scattered memories rushed into him all at once, flooding his mind like a tidal wave. Faces blurred together, voices overlapped in an unintelligible hum, and fleeting images flickered in and out of focus. He saw glimpses of places he couldn’t name, hands reaching for him, laughter twisted with sorrow. The past crashed into the present, disjointed and overwhelming, leaving him grasping for clarity in the chaos.
He wasn’t in a morgue.
He had never been to a morgue.
This was an experiment. He was an experiment.
And he was about to be dissected.
Retirement Has Become A Financial Nightmare And Everyone Is Starting To Panic
When does a woman have the highest chance of getting pregnant? Is this before menstrual period, during the period or after the menstrual period?
I had an aunt who suffered from Parkinson-related symptoms, and the simple act of drinking a cup of coffee had become next-to-impossible for her: before the cup finally reached her mouth, most of the coffee was already gone.
But she once told me that there was one way to drink coffee in an almost normal way: if she ignored the very fact that she wanted to drink coffee, if she thought of something completely different, if she misguided her brain so as to pretend that she had a different goal altogether, she could drink it “unconsciously.”
But as soon as it became intentional, the tremor awakened and the coffee was gone. (Many Parkinson patients will recognize this mechanism, by the way. In Parkinson, the main center of your attention is the epicenter of the shake.)
Something very similar happens to couples who are trying to get pregnant for the first time, especially when they are (too) focused on the outcome: when the dream of becoming a parent sheds a shadow over most anything else, often nothing happens.
And it is that very focus that ruins everything: stress is the last thing a natural pregnancy can stand. So forget about the ideal temperature, about counting the days, about the right food, about mathematically planned s🍑x because the gynecological calendar asks for it, and forget about the OP’s question altogether — it’s all rubbish.
Stop focusing on the goal, and enjoy the nature of the process.
In the particular case of my brother-in-law, the in-vitro treatments cast a spell on his marriage, and the dream eventually faded after so many mathematically planned tries. Once they had given up, they relaxed and enjoyed each other without any stress involved, and BANG — a baby was born without calculation whatsoever.
So ignore the numbers, the periods and the other punctuation marks —
And just do it.
Pictures
When Thieves Picked the WRONG House!
Time for a Break, I Think
Written in response to: “Center your story around something that’s hidden.“
Cajek Veilwinter
Dr. Lynxala pointed at the somewhat lascivious neon sign. “You’re lucky we don’t get surprise visits from…” He trailed off. “Looks unprofessional, folks.”
“So long as we get results,” Dr. Rezen said as she lifted a thin plastic receptacle to her long lips. She was a camel-like alien.
“And nobody knows who we work for anyway,” said Dr. Irdin, a human male.
Dr. Lynxala and all his colleagues – about a dozen of the most talented physicists in the Alliance – all lived onbase. They were compensated thoroughly for it, but their personal habits had begun to show. Lynxala suspected that Irdin and Rezen, for example, were having some kind of affair.
He was jealous.
After a party flowing with Vulanian wine, Dr. Lynxala went back to his apartment about a kilometer away in the vast Blackdeep complex. His apartment was much larger – and emptier – than his real home back on Patheur. It had huge vistas to the nothingness that the moon was flying through on its journey to the end of the universe.
Whenever Lynxala was jealous of his coworkers, he used it as inspiration to continue work on his novel, Love and Wormholes: Interspecies Dialogues in Deep Space.
He planned to publish under a pseudonym, “Professor Skywine,” to hide his identity. He was terrible at spelling, plot, character development…
…And computers.
Despite the popular depiction of geniuses in intergalactic media, they are not knowledgeable in every area. In fact, they are usually spectacular in one, very tiny area of knowledge… and fools in all the rest.
He had sent his first draft to a literary agent on the planet Vulane, who was receptive. She had a cute, squeaky voice and said very nice things in the databits he would receive from her in the subspace net. The image on her Portside account had her sitting on a cushion in a revealing skirt with a silly grin on her delicate snoot, her long, extravagant brush flowing behind her in the beach breeze. Behind her – other than her tail – was the classic setting sun of Vulane, dipping into the bright blue sea and turning it into a miasma of orange and purple.
Lynxala couldn’t write that prose if he was being tortured.
She was obviously vapid, and Lynxala needed that trait for his musings – a cute vixen who loved romance novels instead of secrets. He didn’t want anyone who would pry into who he really was or what he was doing.
Her latest correspondence was her voice along with a data packet. She gently explained that she had some notes on his latest draft.
“No wonder it took so long,” he said. Data packets through subspace channels took forever to travel through space. When Lynxala asked the computer to download the file to his private server, a few things happened at once.
First, the file began to download. Lynxala – who, as we’ve mentioned, is terrible with computers – used a private server instead of the heavily secured – but internally public – mainframe in order to hide his private work from his colleagues. When the file finally downloaded, a hidden script accessed the mainframe through one of its unsecured entrypoints.
Lynxala didn’t like feedback. Writers don’t like feedback.
No one likes feedback.
When it finally finished downloading, Lynxala – who was now in his star-patterned pajamas – stood and walked to the coffee machine for some liquid encouragement.
“Cream, two sugars,” he said.
Instead of the sound of pouring black liquid followed by a few squirts of cream and two white cubes falling into his mug, he heard the error noise: two quick, annoying beeps, followed by the control panel going red.
“What the…?”
Instead of allowing the genius scientists to make their own coffee, the invisible bosses of Blackdeep had connected the coffee machines to the mainframe in order to expedite the distribution of caffeine.
The coffee machines were not monitored by the security protocols.
Who in the Hells would want to hack into a coffee machine, they had asked themselves. Don’t spend money where it isn’t needed, we’re already paying these people enough.
Lynxala slapped the console with his pawed hand.
“Where’s my coffee, you infernal contraption?!”
After a few seconds, the panel went back to its sterile white and coffee, cream, and sugar dispensed. The vixen who had programmed the virus hidden in the datapacket to enter the Blackdeep mainframe had correctly guessed Lynxala’s passcode:
“Skywine”
…and had gained administrator access to the mainframe.
Meanwhile, Lynxala listened to the dulcet tones of his editor as she gushed about his writing style, the setting, the characters, the plot, and especially his choice of words. He smiled and nodded along to the ‘feedback’ as his literary agent-slash-editor caught all his subtext and metaphors.
“Yes,” he said, pausing the audio, “the rain in that scene was an allegory for relationships on a deep-space research station!”
After hearing her nice, soft words, Lynxala fell asleep and dreamed of accolades for his taudry story. A few kilometers away in various directions, other scientists had fallen into a stupor from poisoned Vulanian wine hours ago while a satellite dish slowly moved into position and sent a huge data packet to an area of deep space that was supposedly empty.
Well, not entirely empty. According to the Alliance’s star charts, the signal was headed directly to the Sh’ra homeworld, but of course it wouldn’t reach it.
The Sh’ra were an animalistic, reptiloid race that threatened all of the other “civilized” races. They had the opposite view.
Someone obviously wanted a cover story in case what happened next didn’t cover their cunning little tracks completely.
The “morning” – signified by soft yellow artificial lights above beds – arrived as gently as possible. Lynxala stretched and yawned. His report was ready to send to the higher-ups with a flick of a key.
He strolled over to the food dispenser.
“Anything with eggs?” He asked as he looked out over the vista.
It was the same as he had seen on the last seven-hundred or so nights: darkness, sprinkled with stars and nebulas overlooking a gray, dead moon. There was no atmosphere on the moon the Blackdeep facility inhabited, so the universe was able to yawn before him. Sometimes he thought he could even see incoming galaxies a billion light-years distant if he relaxed enough.
But that was when he was younger. When the idea of a dying universe was interesting.
Now, the meals arrived like clockwork: eggs, bacon, meat, potatoes. He watched them slide down the tube as he studied his spreadsheet on his tablet.
He double and triple checked the math for the day’s test and sent it to his subordinates as he replayed his literary agent’s commentary. Soon, he was summoned to the reaction lab for the day’s demonstration.
“Chief?” Dr. Rezen called out. “Can we have a rest instead? Just a day off?”
The Partheurian blinked, his tail coiling around his leg again. “Did you frazhas drink too much? Is it ‘time for a break’?” He asked, satirizing the sleazy neon sign in their break room.
There were nods from every corner.
“Alright,” he said. “Rezen, make up some kind of report… but for the love of Fracht, stop drinking. Let’s be ready to go tomorrow.”
There were quiet hurrahs as Lynxala turned away, ready to head back to his room and continue his lurid tales of romance in the dark corners of deep space. He wrote a line he liked very much:
“…And for the first time in their careers, when they looked at the stars, they saw each other…”
The next morning happened just like the previous hundreds had with the exception of a message from his mysterious bosses:
Received. Good progress. No breaks today: continue the experiment.
Lynxala nodded to his beige console where the message glowed in green letters. Groggily, he went to his spreadsheet with what he thought were all the parameters he had entered the other night into the mainframe and emailed everyone to be in the experiment chamber by oh nine hundred.
“Prep particle accelerator,” Lynxala said to the onboard computer.
“Affirmative,” it responded in a sly, soft tone.
Lynxala’s ear twitched as he went to the coffee machine and ordered his usual. There was no delay as the black liquid spilled forth into his paper cup. By oh nine hundred, Lynxala was in his sweat pants and lab coat in the experiment chamber as the rest of his team lumbered in.
“No ‘time for breaks’ today,” he said, aping his earlier unclever jab at the neon vixen on the wall. “Okay computer, enact protocol three-zero-one-zero.”
Protocol 3-0-1-0, the three-thousand-and-tenth experiment performed at Blackdeep, was the spreadsheet that Lynxala had created and uploaded to the mainframe. However, because of the virus embedded in the feedback from his “literary agent,” a few very important numbers and ratios had been altered using the backdoor in the coffee machine.
When Lynxala uttered the command, things occurred extremely quickly. The particle accelerator, which had been warming up for an hour and was above spec in terms of power output, suddenly altered its target and unleashed a stream of atoms – all going near the speed of light – into the generator holding the gram of anti-protons. The anti-protons – interacting with the normal matter – converted all their mass into energy within a quadrillionth of a second, as did the regular protons.
Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared, indeed.
About half a lightyear away and about a month later, the synthetic eyes of an up-and-coming archvillainess – hidden in a patch of blank sky near the Sh’ra homeworld – watched her monitor as she intercepted a certain data packet from a part of the sky that was supposed to be uninhabited: catching her species up on a hundred years of work in a nanosecond.
“Time for a break, I think,” she said to herself as she entered the coordinates for her home planet.
If thrust vectoring improves maneuverability so much, why are Sukhoi jets the only ones that use it? (Not including the F-22)
So, a few things to unpack here.
First of all, “thrust vectoring” is not just what’s found on the Su-27 and F-22. Rockets (and missiles) use thrust vectoring. VTOL airplanes like the Harrier, Osprey, and F-35 also use thrust vectoring.
Why aren’t they used more often then?
There are two things: Firstly, since it involves moving the nozzle around using some sort of mechanism, naturally it’s more complex and expensive to make as well as to maintain. Airplanes are already extremely expensive as it is.
Secondly, extreme maneuverability is just not as important to 21st century fighter jets as what people thought when the Su-27 was designed.
Contrary to popular belief (shaped by movies and video games), dodging missiles and winning air-to-air fights today isn’t about “pulling 400 G turns” but more about “being sneaky”, “picking up and shooting the enemy from far away before they do that to you”, and “having advanced electronic warfare capabilities”. The whole “I turn very hard to dodge missile” is mostly useful in last-resort scenario as the missile is barely a second away from you, not when it’s like a minute or so away. But the evasion maneuvers are started well before that by trying to confuse the missile where exactly you’re heading:
Yup. AC-130. Far from the most maneuverable airplane in the world. It dodged several SA-2 missiles in Vietnam by maneuvering “hard” (for something of that size and weight anyway), but well within the capabilities of “normal” fighter jets without fancy thrust vectoring.
Also, notice that I said “several” because they did this to two other missiles after that.
What is actually useful is the ability to sustain turns and hard maneuvers, which simply means “keeping the speed up” because usually you lose speed during hard turns. Sure, you dodged the first missile, but then you’re flying slow and you’re out of energy to spend to dodge the next one; you’d be an easy target.
Thrust vectoring can help with that, but this is also a function of the aircraft aerodynamics as well as the engine performance. Most of the time, it seems, thrust vectoring costs too much for too little benefit.
The hard maneuvers are really useful for marketing to uninformed civilians (i.e. potential recruits) and politicians (i.e. potential customers) though, which is why they’re still included in the repertoires for many air force demo teams with airplanes that can do that—including the USAF F-22s.
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Sir Whiskerton and the Duet of Disaster
Ah, dear reader, you’ve returned once again to join me, Sir Whiskerton, in another delightfully absurd adventure! Today’s tale is one of artistic ambition, auditory agony, and two creators so dedicated to their own vision that they nearly shattered the farm’s delicate peace. It was a collision of two worlds: one of cobwebs and capes, the other of bass drops and beats. So, steel your eardrums and prepare for the cacophonous tale of The Duet of Disaster.
A Proposal in the Moonlight
It began, as Count Catula’s ideas often do, with a dramatic flourish under a full moon. I was enjoying a contemplative evening on the porch when he materialized from a shadow, his cape swirling with unnecessary grandeur.
“Sir Whiskerton,” he intoned, his voice like gravel rolling down a velvet hill. “I have composed my magnum opus! A ‘Symphony of the Night’ so profound, so stirring, it will make the very stars weep!”
“I’m sure it will,” I said, feigning interest while calculating the quickest escape route.
“But!” he declared, holding up a single, dramatic claw. “I fear it lacks… relevance. It needs a modern edge. A certain… je ne sais quoi of the contemporary.”
It was then that his gaze fell upon the barn, from which a steady, low-frequency thump-thump-thump was emanating—the sound of DJ Fader Fuzz testing a new sub-bass loop.
“Him!” Count Catula pointed. “That purveyor of rhythmic pulsations! Together, we shall create a fusion so powerful, it will redefine art itself!”
This, I knew, was a terrible idea. It was the equivalent of suggesting a ballet dancer perform in a bumper car. But before I could voice my concerns, Catula had swept off to propose the collaboration.
The Clash of the Titans
To my astonishment, DJ Fader Fuzz agreed. From his perspective, the challenge was intriguing. “The Count’s composition offers a complex melodic structure with gothic tonalities,” Fader Fuzz purred into his headset mic. “Layering a 140 BPM Agri-Phonk beat over it will create a fascinating juxtaposition.”
“Juxtaposition!” chirped Ditto, who was already wearing tiny, homemade earplugs.
The first rehearsal was held in the barn. Count Catula had somehow wired the old church organ to a generator, its pipes looming like ghastly sentinels. DJ Fader Fuzz’s deck hummed beside it, a spaceship next to a cathedral.
“Begin!” cried Catula, and his paws crashed onto the keys. A wave of somber, majestic, and incredibly loud organ music filled the barn. It was all dramatic chords and mournful melodies—the sound of a thousand haunted castles.
Fader Fuzz, nodding his head to a rhythm only he could discern, began to layer his track. A distorted 808 bassline dropped. Then a skittering, high-hat beat. Then a sample of Porkchop’s contented grunting, pitched down and looped.
The result was not a fusion. It was a war.
The organ’s mournful melody fought a desperate battle against the grunting, wub-wub bass. The sound was less a song and more a physical force. Dust rained from the rafters.
The Farm Reacts
The effects were immediate and bizarre.
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On Bessie the Cow: The conflicting vibrations seemed to interfere with her very biology. At the song’s climax, she let out a confused “moo,” and produced a single, perfectly cubic gallon of milk. She stared at it, then at the barn, utterly bewildered.
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On the Environment: The farm’s weather vane, a proud rooster, began spinning in frantic circles, not according to the wind, but in perfect time to the erratic beat.
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On the Populace: Doris the Hen fainted clean away. The Most Feline—MC Scratches and Lil’ Paws—watched from a safe distance, a mixture of horror and professional fascination on their faces.
“The technical audacity is… staggering,” MC Scratches muttered, his ears flat against his head.
“It’s so bad, it’s almost cool!” Lil’ Paws yelled over the din, unable to stop his paws from tapping.
I sought refuge atop the farmhouse, but even there, the waves of sound assaulted me. It was a symphony of pure, unadulterated conflict.
The Crescendo and the Silence
The “Duet of Disaster” reached its apocalyptic finale. Count Catula, believing the moment required more drama, was now standing on his organ stool, pounding the keys with his entire body. DJ Fader Fuzz, sensing the energy, had turned every dial to its maximum setting, adding a siren sample he’d recorded from the Farmer’s truck.
With a final, deafening CRUNCH-BOOM-WHOOOOP, the sound system overloaded. There was a bright flash from Fader Fuzz’s deck, and a puff of smoke from the organ’s pipes. Then, blessed, utter silence.
The two artists stared at their fried equipment, then at each other, panting in the sudden quiet.
The Aftermath and the Accord
For a long moment, no one spoke. Then, Count Catula straightened his cape. “Your… ‘wub-wubs,’” he said, with immense dignity, “possess a certain primal fury.”
DJ Fader Fuzz adjusted his headphones, which were now slightly melted. “And your chord progressions,” he purred back, “demonstrate a commitment to thematic atmosphere that is… uncompromising.”
They had not created a masterpiece. They had created a catastrophe. But in the smoldering wreckage of their ambitions, they saw not failure, but a fellow artist who refused to yield their vision. They had not collaborated successfully, but they had respected each other’s utter commitment to their craft.
The Moral of the Story
As the farm slowly recovered, with Bessie’s milk returning to its usual cylindrical state and the weather vane settling down, I reflected on the event.
The moral of the story, dear reader, is this: Collaboration requires listening, not just layering. Throwing two brilliant things together does not make one doubly brilliant thing; it often makes a mess. True collaboration is a conversation, a delicate dance of compromise and harmony, not a battle for sonic supremacy.
Count Catula and DJ Fader Fuzz never attempted a remix again. But you will often see them, late at night, nodding to each other from a distance—the vampire cat of the organ and the vibe-master of the deck—two kings of different, equally noisy, kingdoms.
The End.
China Is Furious And Ready To Go To War
This is OLD, but needs a review given what is going on today.
What’s the most savage way you’ve seen someone get fired?
I can tell you the most savage way I’ve been fired. I’d been doing marketing for a small company for about three years. They set up an interview with a client that was about a two-hour drive away for a case study on a Monday morning. At the last minute, the president told me to come by the office and pick up his camera to take pictures. Weird, because I had a camera, but okay.
I got there and headed for his office. I noticed there were several people in the lobby dressed in professional clothes, suits, ties, etc. When I got to his office I found the directors of sales and operations sitting there. He asked me to sit and told me they were letting me go. He also offered me the option of turning in a letter of resignation, which, of course, would mean I couldn’t collect unemployment. I declined and the operations director took me to my office and watched while I packed up my stuff and then walked me out (aka the walk of shame).
The people in the lobby? All interviewing for my job. Friends at that job told me later.
Anyway, I get being fired. Particularly in marketing, there’s always someone who thinks the grass is greener and by replacing you they’ll get sales to boom. However, to this day (it’s been over a decade), I still don’t understand:
- Why the subterfuge about sending me off on an assignment? I mean, that would get me out of the office while they interviewed people, but if you already decided to fire me, why not just do it? On Friday afternoon, which would make more sense, and then you can interview to your heart’s content.
- Why would you have several people all show up at the same time for interviews? Normally you don’t run into other candidates when you’re interviewing for a job, for obvious reasons.
I had another job offer within a few weeks, and never even bothered to try to collect the unemployment he tried to cheat me out of. The president who fired me was himself fired about six months later for misusing company resources (he used to buy things for his house and charge them to the company). I got an email from him a few months after that begging for help finding a job (I don’t think it was directed to me personally — I think he just mass emailed everybody in his contact list in desperation). No idea what happened to him after that.