They’re never amused (why I’ve been fired so much.)

I was going through some of my old computer files, and found this gem I jotted down a few years back. The story is 100% true:

*****

Around 1993, at one of my many jobs, I was a yellow pages salesman. My boss was this super-motivated “fast track” type guy. He read every business book out there, he had a list of goals, and he prided himself on being a peak performer (whatever that means). Not a pleasant guy to be around.

This one time, we were in a meeting. It was myself, my co-worker Butch, and the above-mentioned Mr. Motivation. He was telling us how he was disappointed Butch and I didn’t work late the night before preparing new ads. Instead, we watched the World Series at the hotel bar. He lamented that we would never beat last year’s sales figures if we didn’t get motivated and pull together as a team and focus on our objective (or some other type-A corporate BS) ….*groan*….

Anyway, at that point, I decided to lighten the overly-serious mood with a little humor. I got up and walked to a newspaper that was on a table, pulled the last night’s lottery ticket out of my wallet, and checked the numbers. Mr. Motivation looked at me incredulously and asked what I was doing. I replied “seeing if I still give a @#$% about all this…. Let’s see… 15, 47, 48… not one match… yup, I still give a @#$%. Continue”.

Mr. Motivation was not amused. I lasted maybe another week at the company.