So, let's try this one again, shall we? For those who wanted to know the saga of how I was fired, here it is. I warn you now, gentle reader, that this is a complicated tale, filled with intrigue, rumour, drama and betrayal. If, at the end, you find it confusing, don't worry, those of us who were involved are still confused as to exactly what happened. Names have been changed to protect the innocent and to spite the guilty.

For those of you who didn't know, I worked at an airport parking lot. I sat in a booth, took people's money, answered the phone, and coordinated the shuttle drivers and they brought people to and from the airport. The job wasn't fulfilling, exciting or particularly interesting, but it paid surprisingly well, and gave me lots of time to read. I worked there for three years. After a year or so, a job opening came up, and I encouraged my friend, B., to apply. She got the job, and we lived happily ever after. Well - until we were fired, that is.

It all started this past fall. Several new people were hired and were soon dismissed, for various reasons. Soon after, a complaint was made to the labour board, and an inspection was made. The head office and my boss were extremely upset about this, and apparently "heads were going to roll". According to office rumour, B. and I were suspected of making the complaint. Never mind that two of the people recently dismissed had threatened to call the labour board. Around this time, I received a perfect three year review, in which I was praised for being an excellent employee.

A few weeks passed, and B. discovered she was pregnant. A few days after she announced her pregnancy at work, she was given a letter, notifying her of several "offences" she had apparently committed. She had a meeting with the boss, and pointed out that three of the complaints made against her, she hadn't done (apparently all three of these complaints were brought to the bosses attention by a new employee, we will call Z.). The fourth offense was arriving a few minutes late for work on occasion, which she had, but she reminded the boss that she had made an arrangement with *him* (and the coworker who worked before her) that, due to the bus schedules, she would often arrive just on time, or a couple of minutes late. In fact, the reason she took the bus that often made her a couple of minutes late was due to a policy that our boss had implemented - that no one was allowed to arrive more than 15 minutes early for their shifts, because some people were arriving early and socializing before their shifts. B. had the choice of either breaking this rule, or arriving to work with no time to spare. After this meeting, she was led to believe everything had been sorted out to everyone's satisfaction. A couple of weeks later, she was asked if she was planning on returning to work after her pregnancy leave, to which she answered that she did not know yet. Two days later, she received a phone call from the boss, telling her she was being fired for being two minutes late to work the day before. It is important to note that several employees had been consistently coming in to work late for years, and had never been reprimanded, let alone fired for it (and still were arriving late, even after she was fired). Her termination was effective immediately.

I was very upset by the turn of events, but due to financial circumstances, couldn't afford to quit my job. So, I decided not to discuss B.'s firing with anyone at work. Rumours floated about that B. had been fired because of the labour board complaint. So work went, until a couple of weeks later, when the boss posted a memo stating that employees were no longer allowed to use the computers for personal use. Although this was annoying (as several hours of each shift left me with nothing to do except play on the computer or read) I followed this new policy. Several employees chose to ignore this policy and continued to use the computer.

Around a week after this memo was posted, I remembered that I had a few personal files and games on the computer at work, and brought a disk in to save them to, so I could remove them from the computer. I accidentally left the disk at work. The next morning, I receive a phone call from the morning employee, who is responsible for doing the bank deposits. I am told that my deposit envelope from the afternoon before is missing. This seems incredibly odd, as I remember depositing the money in the safe, and a new trainee had been with me while I had done it, as I was showing him the cashing out procedures. I mention that the trainee had been watching me do my cashing out, and ask him to call me if the deposit is not found. I figure that the envelope had become stuck in the top of the safe (which happened often) and it would be found. A few hours later, I get all call from my boss, telling me that I was being immediately dismissed for using the computer for personal use. I explain to him that I was merely removing personal files from the computer, and I am told that it does not matter, I am being fired anyways. He then says that he will not tell the head office about the missing money when he fills out my termination report. He implies that if I decide to complain to the head office, he will tell them about the money.

Now, there are a number of strange things about this whole situation. I have worked with money for over ten years and have never "lost" any of my deposits. I had a witness watching me deposit the damn thing. Not to mention, there were five people who had the safe's combination (I was not one of them) at work in between the time I made my deposit and the time the money went "missing". One of these people, Z., was even suspected of stealing money several times over the last few months, and had been suspected of stealing money at her last job! And please, if I was going to steal from the company, there are a number of ways to do so without stealing my own damn deposit! Also, just to be petty, why the heck didn't all the employees who chose to break the "no computer" policy get fired as well, even though the boss knew they were doing it? Curiously, the missing deposit was apparently found around twenty minutes after I was terminated, according to the assistant manager.

So here is where the story would end, if it weren't for the events of a couple of weeks ago. Another long time employee (he had worked there over two years) was fired. We shall call him E. Apparently, he came into work one night (he worked the night shift), and went about his job as usual. A few hours later, he was called into the booth by Z. and another employee, A. (Incidentally, A., along with Z., had access to the safe the shift after mine the day my deposit went "missing".) They informed E. that they suspected he had been drinking before arriving to work, and had called the boss to tell him. E. spoke with the boss, and told him that he hadn't been drinking, and had been with someone prior to his shift that could attest to the fact. The boss, told him it did not matter, and he could choose to quit, or be fired for drinking. Now, E. works as a driver, and being fired for drinking would ruin his chances at finding another job, so he agreed to quit.

This is where it gets really strange. At 7am, the same day (this all happened after midnight), his termination papers from the head office (in another city) were already at the office. Even more strangely, someone was being interviewed for E.'s job by 8am. Please, gentle readers, explain to me how exactly, one can be fired in the middle of the night, for an incident that occurred that very same night, and your termination papers arrive from another city in the wee hours of the morning? How can you have an interview with a person you didn't even know you were looking for until a few hours before? Was the psychic hotline involved? Has the head office decided to keep it's human resources office open twenty four hours a day? Is there are new midnight courier service that bends the fabric of time and space? Was the boss so desperate to replace E., that he was phoning prospective employees at two am to set up interviews? Sheesh, at least with B. and I, there was an attempt at subtlety.

That would be the whole sordid story. I have found a new job, which I love. I had forgotten that I actually like customer service, it had been so long that I had worked anywhere so blessedly normal. (Okay, the Beanie Babies are a little weird.) My employees are so nice - there are no rumours, backstabbing or office politics at all, it is great! It is so very different an environment that it started me thinking about how you can get so immersed in a crazy situation, that you don't even noticed how crazy and fucked up it is until you leave and get to see it from this side of normal.