There was this company once; it was based overseas. They had a salesperson; for the sake of this exercise, we’ll call her, oh, Worthless Piece of Shit … WPOS for short. In the span of 20 months as a sales rep charged with closing, WPOS closed no deals. Zip. Nada. Not shite. What did she do during this time? Well, she managed to work on her personal companies, steal money from her current company by arranging “business trips” to visit her significant other and personal-business contacts in other parts of the country, clip her nails at her desk, stab bosses and colleagues in the back to lead to dismissals, and manipulate the internal lead tracking system to make it appear as if she was doing, you know, worky-type stuff. Oh, did I mention WPOS made more money than either the CEO or COO of this company?
After finally accruing the stones necessary to cut ties after a seemingly interminable length of time, WPOS was sent packing. Except by “sent packing,” I mean, no arrangements were made for her to gather her personal effects or have them sent to her whereabouts. Instead, her possessions sat in her cubicle for a week before enterprising former coworkers took it upon themselves to box up her shite for her—with the side benefit that her primely located former cubicle would be quickly usurped by those more deserving. Following the process of carefully delineating WPOS’s possessions from company property and placing them in requisite separate boxes, the boxes were moved five feet outside of her former cubicle in an effort to ready said cube for takeover.
Not so fast, my friend. The overseas-based company, grossly overestimating American fondness for jobs that they are both fired from and don’t want in the first place, panicked, wondering if WPOS would sue them for firing them and try to “come back to the company.” [Pause for you to think about that] A hastily constructed e-mail was sent out instructing the remaining team not to touch WPOS’s belongings in case she changed her mind or was made uncomfortable by the fact that the cubicle she no longer works in at the company she no longer works at was disturbed. As the days passed, word finally filtered down that WPOS had made arrangements to retrieve her stuff from said company after-hours on a Friday evening—which would mark the first time WPOS had ever set foot inside company offices after 5 p.m. on any day.
Not surprisingly, Monday morning arrives and the previously mentioned boxes remain where they are. WPOS never showed up, never called, never explained. Queries are raised as to whether the remaining team still can’t move their cubicles. Finally, the team is instructed that WPOS has “rescheduled” the time when she will pick up her possessions for several more days. However, the remaining former coworkers are still not allowed to move cubes, apparently for fear that evidence that the company has moved on from an employee that engaged in theft and fraud during a memorable year-and-a-half tenure would somehow hurt her feelings. You know, more than getting shit-canned for not doing shit would.
Essentially, you have a company firing a worker for not doing shit, then relying on that fired person to actually do shit in order to move on as a company. Apparently, the company engaged in a fear that moving WPOS’s boxes five feet might cause her to change her mind and sue the company? Keep in mind that this is a company that has an SOP for how long employees are allowed to have computers remain on at an unattended desk for fear that sensitive information could be seen by uncleared eyes … yet the company is allowing a fired, disgruntled employee whose gravy train derailed access to the company offices a week and a half after she has been axed? Never mind that most companies won’t allow jettisoned former workers past the front desk and would have packed up the possessions, erased all evidence of the former employee’s existence from the records, and made arrangements with security to preside over the possessions until they are collected by the fired person. Hell, never mind that many companies would have sued the fired worker to claim stolen funds.
Someday, this episode will be one of many chronicled in a tell-all book about inane and mind-numbing work experiences … in a chapter titled “That Time I Was Held Hostage By A Small Cardboard Box.”
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