From Rancho Sudiegirl, Inc...the new, improved "Mr. Dithers/Leona Helmsley Corporate Jackass Award"...part one of oh-so-many

Sudiegirl's note...I had omitted the first Leona Helmsley corporate jackass award entry because of my unusal flash of conscience. However, I have since ditched that, and since I have legitimately found my source elsewhere I can safely say "YEEHAW! Let the GAMES BEGIN!"


Man Fired for Eating Pizza Wins Contest
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer
Fri Sep 2, 8:12 PM ET

A computer engineer who lost his job because he ate two pieces of pepperoni pizza left over from a company meeting has been named the winner of an offbeat Internet contest that solicited stories about outrageous firings.

A panel of Silicon Valley judges assembled by Simply Hired, a Mountain View startup that sponsored the contest, picked Jim Garrison's strange tale from more than 1,000 entries submitted during the past month.

The reward: a free Caribbean cruise that will include passengers famously fired by Donald Trump on his popular television show, "The Apprentice." (Substitute the fired passengers for Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, Adrien Brody and the Chippendales' guys and Sudiegirl is there with her big bowl of Jell-0 and her TWISTER GAME!)

Garrison, 39, prevailed over some tough competition.

The runners-up included these bizarre stories: a furniture mover who got fired after he and a co-worker were caught fencing with some adult sex toys that they found in a customer's bedroom; a worker who misunderstood a manager's instructions to send some sensitive data to microfilm and e-mailed it to a "Michael Finn" instead; and a warehouse worker found doing perverse things with the prosthetics made by his employer. (All of those are certainly strong competition!)

It made for such fascinating reading that one woman posted an account about how she got fired for spending too much company time scrolling through all the postings on Simplyfired.com. (Oh boy...that's too bad. That's more or less gotten me busted too...gotta be careful!)

Garrison, who lives in Highlands Ranch, Colo., said he never thought he would be rewarded for getting fired. Then again, he never dreamed he would be fired after he ate two of the six pieces of pepperoni pizza left over from a company meeting. (It always starts with pizza, doesn't it?)

Although he didn't work in the department that held the meeting where the pizza was served, Garrison figured it was fair game since the company had bought it and it looked like it was going to be wasted if it wasn't eaten. What he didn't know is that several other employees had already worked out a plan to take the leftover pizza home with them. (I hear "Dragnet" music playing in the background...)

When they discovered one-third of the leftover pizza pie had been eaten, the employees reported Garrison to management, ultimately leading to his firing last November — a month after he ate the food. (Technically, stealing food at some companies is the same as if you go to their desk and steal their purse, or pickpocket them in the restroom...not a pretty scene.)

"If somebody had warned me, I would have been happy to pay for the pizza," Garrison said. (You know, he's right! I mean, if someone is going to be that concerned about the whole pizza scenario, they simply should have labeled it. Get a piece of paper and a pen, write "This pizza is ours"...doesnt' even have to be spelled right or gramatically correct...and problem solved!)

On the advice of Simply Hired, Garrison declined to identify his former employer other than to say it's a large mortgage company. He is now happily employed as a programmer at a satellite TV company, but he still thinks twice about eating any leftovers sitting around the office. (Sounds familiar! Hmmm...)
___
On The Net:
http://www.simplyfired.com

Sudiegirl's final opinion?

This kind of crap is so stupid! I remember when I worked at a small law firm in Iowa as a typist. Our big boss was a very uptight germophobe, and one day when I was training a new person that was getting over a cold, she heard this person cough and ran across the work area to my cube where I was training her. Then, she asked, "Are you sick?" like this woman had the bubonic plague or something, and the woman said, "I'm getting over a cold, but I'm not contagious."

My boss then had the balls to ask, "Well, do you have a mask you could wear just in case? We don't want to infect the whole office."

This new hire was dumbfounded. "NO, I don't have a mask I could wear!?"

So my boss...who, mind you, was a top law school grad, etc...SENT HER HOME until she got over her cold. The new hire was there for an hour, tops, and NEVER came back. I quit a week later.

So, yes, weird bosses are out there, and so are weird employees.

Sudiegirl the much hired and fired her own bad self.