There are so many loser jerks I’d love to see led out of work by cops. But it had to happen to my best friend in the place.
This is the worst firing I’ve ever heard of happening to someone I know. If there’s any silver lining, it’s that Fish always liked to shock. No one’s going to forget him any time soon.
All I’ve got is secondhand reports. He won’t call me back. No one knows exactly what he said or who overheard it and reported it, but it was something about shooting up either the whole place, or someone and then himself.
No one who liked him thinks he was serious. He was always acting crazy and getting away with it. He got falling-down drunk at the company Christmas party a couple years ago, grabbed a mic and imitated his then-boss. It was a really good imitation and hey, what’s a party without one drunk. And he’d show up for work conferences in alcohol-themed T-shirts, while the rest of us dressed business casual. Sometimes people would comment about his drinking. Did we think he drank too much? We’d shrug, and joke he had too much on us for us to point fingers. But really I didn’t want him to stop. I know too many buzzkills as it is.
Everyone said his work was good. But there was a change in managers, and the new one seemed to find him annoying. They can always get you on something, and apparently he was going through that process of them trying to find stuff. Then he had to hand it to them on a silver platter.
They let him work for a day and a half before doing anything. Reportedly, they even let him finish his court cases, before the cops approached him and led him out of the courthouse. How scared could management have been? He was interviewed as a potential 5150 and released, but warned not to go back to the office or face arrest.
I’ve made a few murder-suicide jokes his way before. Never in an office setting, though. I’ve had nearly a week to process this, and I still feel like crap. Somehow it makes me feel old. Like nothing will ever really be fun again. I can’t even drink over it for the next five months, and when I can, Fish won’t be around.
If the managers were truly scared by his remarks they wouldn’t have let him stay around for a day and a half and finish up his tasks. They just used his remarks as an excuse to get rid of him, on their terms.
Comment by Peter — November 5, 2009 @ 8:07 am
I can’t remember if I posted on this or not, but there was a guy at Monmark-Soyokaze that got fired for his MySpace page. So worried were they about the contents of said MySpace page that they hired off-duty cops to hang around for a couple days.
I agree with Peter, though. Sounds like in this case they just wanted an excuse to get rid of the guy. Odd that they would bring cops in to it.
Comment by trumwill — November 5, 2009 @ 10:17 am
OK good, so far no one has suggested that me and the rest of his buddies are just bunch of immature alcoholics who enabled our king on the road to ruin. No one has criticized me for my idea of fun being getting wasted and complaining about stuff. So I can stop worrying. This is not a sign of some larger problem. Fish will rise again somewhere else, Tone will give birth and get back in the game, and all will be well.
Comment by stone — November 5, 2009 @ 10:47 pm
Hey, congrats on being preggers, btw.
Comment by Kirk — November 7, 2009 @ 7:00 am