Okay. This Emmalee Bauer thing just made me laugh too hard:DesMoines Register: "Diary of a Goof-Off"
Digg.com: "Woman Fired for Writing..."
Let's see if I have this right: So Ms. Bauer managed to compile a 300-page journal of personal minutiae — some sort of Autobiography of a Slacker undertaking. It's not enough that she pulled off this ... epic ... on company time; she even used various company resources to get the thing on paper (that's my impression, at least).
Then she got fired for it (go figure), filed for unemployment, was denied, appealed the denial, and got denied again — by a judge, this time, on account of the evidence of "desire to not work" contained in her journal.
That is too, too rich. I could pile on with the "government worker in training" and "union worker in training" jokes, but I shall refrain. However, a few musings:
1. If this woman isn't blogger material, I don't know who is.
2. Some publisher out there will buy her work. Mark it down. And it will sell. Who gets the proceeds, though (Ms. Bauer, or her former employer, who effectively paid her to write the thing) ... well, that's an interesting question.
3. What exactly were her managers doing all this time? Monitoring any tangible measure of productivity obviously wasn't in the cards.
4. If you're an employer, and Ms. Bauer's resume lands on your desk, do you use it to sop up the ketchupy remains from your lunchtime Whopper ... or do you forward it to your competitors? (Of course you'd attach glowing references.)
Labels: Odd 'n' Fun
