Your Worst Day (not including death) ...

It's because you couldn't drive a stick.

 

More proof that grooms don't matter on wedding days. We have one line, don't screw it up. Otherwise we're just placeholders.

Your wife sounds like a smart woman.

 

I have not buried my parents or my wife, so my worst day is TBD.

However, the phone call from the North Carolina State Highway Patrolman one weekday morning at the Rocky Mount Telegram where he started with "your wife has been in a serious car accident ..." and left my life hanging for a split-second before "... and she wants to walk to you" was one you never want to get, even if the outcome was positive. That's a heart-in-your-throat moment.

A close second was having to call Gwen at school from the courthouse to tell her the best deal my lawyer could get was 60 days in jail and four years probation for fending off two gun-wielding, senile, paranoid old people. That was worse than serving the time, to be honest, because we were certain the case would get tossed.

 

About 30 years ago, things were going fine. I was working as a sports staffer on a small midsize paper, a job I'd had for about two years. It was fun and I really liked the area. I was making a shitload more money than I'd made in my first two one-man shop jobs at tiny dailies.

I was low man on the sports staff totem pole, but I was considered kind of a rising young star, and given the ages and life situations of the other guys, it was perfectly foreseeable I'd eventually rise to sports editor. (Or have opportunities to jump to something better if I so chose.)

The paper was well-ensconced in its area, had stable circulation and a solid advertising base.

Until one day I was called into the office of the publisher, a corporate douche who had been parachuted in by the corporate ownership.

Mr. Publisher said he had a wonderful surprise for me: the paper was going to launch a free distribution edition in one of the outlying towns of our circulation area.

Probably not by any sort of coincidence, the area was the territory where I had worked at my previous job, as the ME of the tiny 5-day daily in the little resort town.

It had already been decided, it was made clear to me, that my experience as managing editor at the 5-day daily was considered perfect to be the editor of the new free distribution shopper whose obvious purpose was to put the 5-day daily out of business.

(Entirely incidental to that discussion, the move would also increase my daily to-and-from work mileage from 5 miles to about 60 miles.)

"We could just order you to do it," Mr. Doucheboy prattled on, just in case I'd forgotten who was in charge, "but we'd rather have you on board with it, do it of your own free will."

Throughout Mr. Publisher's 20-minute self stroking monologue, I had a continual sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Not that I had any particular doubt I could do the job (and as it turned out, I could), but just the feeling I was bring uprooted out of a really good career position and being thrown backwards into a corporate charade designed to crush a minor competitor, and to which they'd have no lasting commitment to continue to support once their primary goal was achieved.

As things turned out, I was precisely right. I stayed about a year and panic jumped to a different sports job, where a chain reaction of bad things awaited.

I still remember sitting in Mr Publisher's office, nodding my head and smiling, getting a cold fishy handshake as he sent me out to the door, getting into my car and thinking, "this is never going to fucking work."

 

I dated someone long distance for 5 years, nearly the entirety of our romantic relationship. We had been increasingly close friends for about 2 years and then a couple of months before college graduation something clicked and we got together. Due to grad school and work issues, we never spent more than a week at a time together.

Finally, the stars align and she gets a job in the city where I was working. She moves in and within a couple of days I realize that we made a huge mistake. Just pure misery. After maybe 3 weeks, I work up the nerve to tell her that we should split up. Get home from work and when I get to the apartment, she has already moved out.

Got in a really deep funk for a couple of years after that. We hadn’t spoken in more than 20 years until I reached out to her.

 

My worst day was when I lost my job at the LAT. The date, and everything else about it, was seared into my memory, and to this day, I remember every detail -- right down to what those involved with the final meeting were wearing -- even though it happened almost 14 years ago now.

I've never posted in-depth about it, and I may never do so. But that event knocked me for a loop for a long time. I'm actually thankful to this place, however, and I'll be forever grateful to a few former LAT colleagues, too, for helping me to recover, eventually.

 

I was running an arena football League PR when one of my players took a helmet to helmet hit and suffered fatal injuries. He died at the hospital an hour later.

Still hurts to discuss the actual hit and complete ----show that was the next 48 hours with people forgetting I trained in crisis PR with the Oklahoma City PAO office. Owners, players, interns, general managers, even the dance team made a horrible thing even worse and getting in the way of getting the job done.

 

I was well into over half my legal career and decided to leave my firm (where I was a comfortable partner and liked everyone) to join a new shiny one with what seemed like a great opportunities. I was sole breadwinner, two young kids, mortgage, etc.

Well after only 8 mos. I am told by phone, not even the courtesy of a meeting with management committee or the head partner, get this, “we’ve decided to change your compensation down ....FIFTY PERCENT.”

WTF?? Who does that? Half?

Call wife and say emergency meeting at home. I say “f*”*k those guys” but we discuss what’s important in our lives and what’s not.

Well, had to take account of all my clients and find new landing spot immediately. I called my old firm and made a new arrangement where they had no risk (I was only guaranteed double minimum wage ) Luckily every client moves again and doesn’t complain.

Yeah worst day.

I decided then never rely on anyone but myself for clients and my career has gone well beyond where I was even before the move. (I never talk about that blip in my career except to my wife)

 

one of the worst, but the most recent. Fractured wrist on Thursday morning. Aside from physical complications for me, we are picking up grand kids in a couple weeks. Stopping at kings dominion on the way back and hopefully swimming in ocean with them when we get home. Hopefully i will be able to do both.

could always be worse.

 

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