With Co-Workers like this: Skip the Retirement party!

Was told by 2 different, unconnected former co-workers that it happened, but yeah, I still don't believe them.

I also worked for the publisher in question at another stop, and he is one of the 5 dumbest people I have ever worked with. So that's why I could give it a 1 percent chance of it happening?

Anyone here from Rochester who may have been around for a publisher's recent (2 or 3 years ago) going-away?

 

Fraud — I like it!

 

I worked with a guy who knew he was going to retire soon after 40-some years at the paper, but he hadn't decided when. He got called into a conference room by an editor he hated and was called out for not having a particular article completed. He quietly got up, walked out, went to his car and retrieved some gear that belonged to the paper. He plopped it on a desk and drove home.

He wouldn't answer anyone's call and was technically terminated for abandoning his job. We did an offsite retirement party for him a month or so later.

 

Not newspapers, but many years ago we had a high school football coach quit about three games into the season. It was a private school and he was a crotchety old bastard. The guy was double dipping (getting state retirement plus a paycheck from the private school), so he didn't necessarily need the job and eventually went out in a blaze of glory.
He called the team together after the pep rally at 10 a.m. Friday morning, told them he was done, then walked to the principal's office and handed in his brief resignation letter and went home.
The team had a road game at 7 p.m.
That's always stood out to me as a great "Fuck you, I'm out" move.

As a side note, I found out that afternoon and tried calling him, but he wasn't answering the phone. Once or twice I did that thing where you space out waiting for the machine/voice mail to pick up and let it ring about 20 times. I had to cover their game that night, an hour away, so time was starting to run short. One of our news reporters happened to be his next door neighbor, and when he went home around 4 I told him to call me if the coach was at home. Coach was, so I went over to his house and knocked on the door.
He did talk to me, but one of the first things he said was, "Why did you let that fucking phone ring?"

 

Worked with a guy who lived 500 miles from the station. He would work five days, stayed in a hotel, flew home Friday night and flew back Monday morning.

On Monday he didn't show up for work. The boss called his work cell phone and her own desk started ringing. She looked through the drawers and found his phone and ID badge. Dude didn't even leave a note -- he just stuck his station-issued stuff in the boss' desk and disappeared. (She was relieved -- dude was terrible and a leftover from the previous management.)

 

One might say that's not very professional but I can see why he did it. Guy's been there 40 years and gets called out by some punk editor? The way I see it is you have no choice, you resign. You probably should let somebody know so they can kill your email account and passwords. I wonder how long it took them to "retire" him from the computer system.

 

Yeah, right.

 

Lemon cake, I presume?

 

This is why I give every person who is leaving the same advice — on your last day, call out sick.

 

On David Granger's last day at Esquire, after nineteen years in charge, he told everyone he was going out to grab lunch and never came back. Legend.

 

Sure beats what Craggs did.

 

I think A.J. Daulerio set the gold standard. Bankrupt the entire company and commit your boss to exile in Switzerland.