Chapter One: Crossroads

It was late on a Friday when my boss called me into his office to fire me. I walked in with a sense of dread and loathing. The dread and loathing wasn't because I knew I was going to be fired. It was because dread and loathing was my general mood any time I had to deal with this toad who, by some bizarre quirk of the English language, was referred to as my "superior".



Our HR Manager was sitting next to him. HR only got involved if something really bad was happening. For instance, if somebody else was getting a promotion I wanted, you could bet that some HR person, somewhere, had a hand in it.



Other times, they would step in to prevent you from firing an ineffective employee or to remind you that taking boxes of paper towels from the supply cabinet to your car was, in some cultures, considered a form of theft.



Whenever the company was doing something that was clearly not to the employee's benefit, HR would be the spin doctors. For instance, when the company eliminated pensions, it was HR who got to remind us that this was not so bad because we were allowed to save our own money for retirement in the 401(k) program the company had all along.



I actually liked the HR manager at the factory, personally. His hygiene was good and he tended not to download virus-infected internet porn onto his work computer. As the IT Manager, instances of internet porn could consume weeks since I had to carefully examine each image, sometimes for several minutes and usually several times, each.



His good personal behavior put him among the top few people in the factory as far as I was concerned. I even invited him to my son's birthday party one year. He delighted the preschoolers in attendance with a tale of how Humpty Dumpty would have been much better off if he'd continued his previous employer's health benefits under COBRA.



In a work setting, though, there were few sights less welcome than an official interaction with the HR manager.



He and my boss were seated on the same side of the table. I was seated on the other side. With such an unusual seating arrangement, there were very few possibilities as to the nature of the meeting.



I quickly eliminated the possibility that this was a job interview and figured they were there to fire me.



My boss's first words were, "We have a problem". This was an ironic turn of phrase since the result of the meeting was probably going to be the happiest day either one of us had seen in 2 years.



He explained that the amount of internet traffic coming from my computer was excessive. Because of this, he had permission from corporate to fire me.



I thought his choice of words was odd. It wasn't, "I'm going to fire you". It wasn't "You're fired". It was "corporate says I have enough here to let you go."



Picture the neighborhood bully stopping an 8 year old and saying, "Give me your lunch money, or mom says I can beat you up".



But when it comes to firing somebody in a Fortune 500 company, almost everybody needs mom’s permission.



Firing somebody is messy; it's better for the company if a person simply resigns. Otherwise, HR, given their role in the organization, would probably have to step in, yet again, to keep the company from ridding itself of an ineffective employee.



Allowing somebody to resign is the corporate equivalent of somebody burning your house down, but giving you the option to hold the match afterwards and claim that you did it yourself.



The main reason people do this is so that when they apply for their next job, they can say that they "resigned" rather than they were "fired".



I'm not sure why this logic holds sway. Everybody knows your next interview is going to involve questions like this:



“So, you used to work for the Parker Hannifin Corporation at $95,000 a year. You resigned your job to fulfill a lifelong dream of being unemployed and collecting food stamps for 14 months. And now that you've fulfilled that dream, you want to work for us for $95,000 a year again? Why not go back to Parker?”



Most businesspeople of any real value know that once you’ve been in the work world for a few decades or two, it’s possible to have been fired from a job. Really, very few people would hold it against you if, for instance, you worked for a company for 13 years and were then let go after a year or two with a new boss.



But HR people are squirrelly and are reluctant to ever hire a person who has been fired. So be it.



The part that’s hard to fathom is that it’s HR guys who came up with the whole “resigned” thing. They invented their own set of rules, and then invented their own way to beat the game.



I did get a severance package. That's the corporate term for "bribe the fired guy" if you're middle management. If you're a CEO, you get a severance package which means "your choice of any two nations on the South American continent plus your brother's wife as a chambermaid".



This was an easy decision, though. First, my options consisted of resigning and getting something or being fired and getting nothing. Luckily, with my MBA and 13 years of Fortune 500 experience, I was able to deduce that “something” was, indeed, better than “nothing”.



Second, just a couple of months earlier, I had actually contemplated walking into my boss' office and saying, "If you give me a severance package, you could have my resignation today." The conversation actually did take place, but the boss was asleep and I really didn't want to wake him. He was so much easier to deal with when he was unconscious.



So, for him to call me in, say I wouldn't be working there anymore and give me a severance package to boot would be about like the police arresting a crackhead and sentencing him to 3 days on the crackpipe at the government's expense.



Why did I hate my boss so much? It was hard to put my finger on it. Maybe it was the fact that in the culture he came from, the words "nap" and "meeting" are interchangeable.



On many occasions, a meeting he'd convened would be moving right along until everybody in the room noticed that he was sitting in his chair with eyes closed, fast asleep. We'd stare at each other, unsure of what, exactly, we were supposed to do, then we would continue the meeting as though nobody noticed that at the head of the table, there was a small-statured Buddha wrestling with the gods of slumber.



Eventually, he'd wake up, listen to a few words, respond with a comment that was tangentially related such as "Chinese bats bite coconuts" and the meeting would continue. Relative to the things he said while fully conscious, the things he said when coming out of slumber were only marginally more puzzling. So, all was fine.



So, he busted me for surfing the net using a work computer. As the IT Manager, it was somewhat difficult not to use the computer now and then. And surfing the net was sort of a professional hazard. Like bartenders and alcoholism.



I'll admit that I did surf the net frequently. For instance, if I were in the middle of a conference call where I wasn't really needed I might surf the net. Or, if my boss came into my office to talk to me, surfing the net was probably the only way for me to appear alert. Luckily, he usually fell asleep after only a few minutes.



When he'd wake up, he'd say, "What are you doing on that computer?" I'd tell him that I was preparing my expense report. He'd say, "Why is the expense reporting software called 'implications of head trauma in motorcycle accidents on concentration and short-term memory'?"



Usually the strain of asking a tough question like that required another nap and by the time he woke up, I was already out the door on my way home. This was sometimes problematic if it was, say, 9:30 in the morning, but you have to balance work and family life.



Leaving at 9:30 would allow me plenty of time to have an "executive's lunch" at a local strip-club and get sufficiently buzzed that the thought of watching hours upon hours of Barney with my son was starting to become appealing.



Work-life balance doesn't happen by accident. You have to work for it.



Still, it was a bit odd that I'd get busted for net surfing. HR had previously prevented us from firing people who had used the computer to download pornography, jokes with ethnic slurs in them, content that was degrading to women and pictures of somebody's Aunt Eunice's vacation to Branson.



If they could tolerate egregious violations of human decency such as that, what could possibly have been so bad about me downloading valid, work-related information about the effects of head trauma from motorcycle accidents?



I signed a pre-prepared resignation letter. They escorted me into my office where 2 boxes had been prepared for me to pack my stuff into. They stood over me as I packed up. Apparently, they wanted to make sure that the pictures of my 3 year old son weren't somehow company property.



You never know when some unsupervised ne'er do well will try to stuff a laptop computer down the front of their pants and walk out saying that they buy their underwear secondhand from Sponge Bob Squarepants.



I asked if I could say goodbye to my staff and the boss said "no". I tried explaining that if I were "resigning", the customary thing to do would be to say goodbye before I left.



The boss, using his impressive skills of logic and rhetoric, countered with "no".



Apparently the "resignation" thing is not particularly designed to allow a person to keep their dignity, as I imagined it might. The reason I came to this conclusion is that for the next 4 weeks, I got calls at home from people asking, "What did you do that got you fired?"



This may come as a shock to nearly everybody, but I'm going to allow the possibility that maybe the company only plays the "resignation" game only because it's good for them. No, really, maybe they're actually acting only in their own interests.



I know that makes me sound terribly cynical, but I suspect it may be true. I'm starting to think that the company cares more about itself than it does about the people it is firing. When it's good for them, I “resigned”, but when it would have been good for me, I was simply fired.



As I was leaving, smiling and shaking the hands of my boss and the HR manager, I found it difficult to express my grief. It was difficult because my feelings of grief were being overshadowed at the moment by feelings of giddy joy. Sadness is so much easier to express when you're not giggling like a 6 year old who just heard Santa fart at the mall.



I shook the hand of my boss and wished him good luck. Granted, I was using a liberal definition of "good luck". By "good luck", what I really meant was, "I hope you die of a heart attack, you narcoleptic mental deficient."



He smiled in return and shook my hand. He wished me "good luck" which is the way a corporate boss tells a long-serving departing subordinate, "please Jesus, don't make anything of yourself after this because that'd really make me look stupid."



During the drive home, between choruses of "Zippity Doo Dah", I briefly considered my options.



Option one would be to start my own business and become a millionaire.



Option two would be to move to Phoenix, buy a house, become a police officer, and by virtue of the appreciation in the price of real estate, to become a millionaire.



When I got home to my wife, I told her, simply, "I lost my job… but the good news is that we're going to be millionaires".



Her response wasn't quite what I expected since it lacked words like "slacker asshole" and "jackass loser". She asked, simply, "what are you going to do?"



I told her about my plan to join the PD in Phoenix. She responded, "Oh."



When it comes to my wife, she's really the rock of the family. I call her the rock of the family for her strength in all situations. Also, because of the rock she keeps in her purse to help her split my head open and collect on my life insurance policy if I should ever really goof things up.



That night as we snuggled to go to sleep, she lulled me to sleep with soothing phrases like, "Move your head a little to the left. Not so close to the nightstand. Here, put this towel under your head so you won't ruin the pillowcase."



The next day I was supposed to go to a family gathering in Akron, 3 hours away. My 3 year-old son had been talking about nothing else for weeks.



All week long, the conversations in the house went:



Me: Son, are you excited about going to Akron?



Logan: What?



Me: Akron. Are you ready to go to Akron?



Logan: Where?



Me: Akron, to see your grandma.



Logan: Who?



I was feeling under the weather, though. The thought of moving from Toledo to a land of perpetual sunshine in Phoenix where all a person has to do is buy a house and watch it increase in value faster than Microsoft stock in the 90s was depressing me.



Either that or I was being dragged down by the realization that I had no job and no real prospects for a job. Nah, I had to be depressed at the thought of leaving Toledo. That's the only thing that makes sense.



I was just too tired for a car-trip and told the wife that I needed to relax and collect myself with a few beers at the strip club. She responded by tossing her rock into the air and catching it over and over.



So… at the hayride, people asked the customary, "How's life at Parker?"



I responded, "I wouldn't know. I don't work there anymore."



"Good lord, when did this happen?" they'd ask, shocked.



"Yesterday. I found out I resigned at 4:30 yesterday afternoon."



Then, their tone went from one of shock and sympathy to one of puzzlement.



"So, you've been there as recently as 4:30 yesterday afternoon?"



I'd explain, "No, I was there until about 5:00. Had to sign some paperwork and pack up my stuff."



Perplexed, they'd continue, "So, you're saying you have no idea what's going on at Parker because you left at 5:00 on a Friday? Do you think that much has changed today while the place was closed?"



Arrrgggh!!! "Look, I resigned, I don't work there anymore. I don't care what's going on there anymore."



"But you didn't care that much about the place when you worked there," they'd say, "and what do you mean you 'found out' you resigned. Did you get fired?"



Arrrggghhh!!!!! I see the Parker people have even let the cat out of the bag to my family! Let me "resign instead of being fired" my ass!!!



That was probably the worst day I had since I wrecked my motorcycle 6 weeks earlier. That was a really bad day.



It was a pretty bad wreck. It was actually a pretty bad series of wrecks. I only remember the first one. I lost consciousness, multiple times, and eventually ended up with a bike that was no longer capable of being ridden, with a damaged helmet, sitting in the emergency room of the local hospital, with no recollection of how I got there or what had happened.



The doctor said I got brain damaged. This didn't bother me much. I had prior brain damage. So, additional brain damage was likely to go unnoticed by family and friends.



They also told me a lot of important things about head trauma. The doctor said I got brain damage.



After three days in the hospital, I was a bit foggy. During that time, the doctor told me I was brain damaged.



So, when I went back to work, I told both the HR Manager and my boss that I had been in an accident and taken a pretty hard shot to the head. I explained that it was very difficult for me to concentrate, but that the doctors expected me to recover pretty much fully. Only time would tell.



I should probably have taken a few weeks off, but needed to be there to try and finish out two overdue projects I'd been working on. "Working" on these projects consisted of asking the software vendor to do something, and them saying they wouldn't do it.



Then, I'd ask their legal counsel if it'd be okay to change the contract, and they'd say "no".



Then, I'd go to our legal counsel and ask if it was okay not to change the contract and they'd say "no".



Then, I'd have to go to our director of information systems and ask if it was okay if they didn't change the software and he'd say "no".



Granted, this could have been accomplished by any person with a preschooler's grasp of the English language, but the only other person available to handle these negotiations would have been my boss. Since, again, this task required a preschooler's grasp of the English language, this ruled him right out and put the burden squarely on my shoulders.



Letting my boss and the HR Manager know that I had just taken a shot to the head was just my way of making sure that they didn't mistake any unusual behavior for intentional mischief. You know... unusual behavior… like excessively and compulsively surfing the internet trying to find out information about head trauma in motorcycle accidents.



What I really should have done was taken some time off, set up some evaluations to determine any effects the accident may have had on my cognitive ability, and waited until I was 100% before returning to work.



I still wonder why I didn't do that. Go figure that my decision-making wasn't really all that clear. Could it have been the recent head-trauma? Nah. Though I do wonder sometimes if walking around feeling like my head was being squeezed in a vice was affecting me at all.



Who knows, it might have had odd effects like, oh, inability to concentrate and an obsessive preoccupation with head trauma in motorcycle accidents.



In any event, my career with the Parker Hannifin Corporation was over. I no longer had to endure corporate politics, idiotic bosses, unruly subordinates, paltry raises, relocating every 3 years… I was really going to miss that place.