Monday, January 10, 2005

I've Been Censored! :-(

I lost my job, thanks to my blog. Last week, I wrote a little piece about my co-workers, now ex-co-workers, who were largely obnoxious, irritating assholes. So I got called into Erika the Big Boss's office this morning and she told me that someone anonymously forwarded my blog to her, and I had mentioned one of my ex-co-workers by name, and that was a security risk and "totally inappropriate." Yeah, God for-fucking-bid. Anyway, "you can't work here anymore," so I had to leave, my only consolations being that I'd write about the experience in my blog for all of you to read and that, of course, there's the possibility that the theatre will collapse, killing everyone inside except the recently-fired.

What pisses me off is the balls I don't have in handling the situation. First of all, mentioning a co-worker's name in my blog is not, by any stretch, "totally inappropriate." Walking on stage in the middle of a performance and urinating on the lead actor would be totally inappropriate. Mentioning She Who Shall Not Be Named (and I don't know why the hell I'm not using her name now, since it's not like they're gonna be able to fire me again or anything) might have been poor judgment — and I don't even concede that — but it's much less inappropriate than firing someone for casually posting a co-worker's name.

To some extent, I understand her point, and if Overreacting-Bitch Erika (that's Erika Feldman, by the way, and if you want to get in touch with her, her e-mail is erika@theatrerow.org) asked me to take that post down, I would have gladly. I mean, if I were in She Who Shall Not Be Named's position, I would've been totally comfortable writing (possibly imprudently) about every detail of my job and every weirdo I encountered during the day. So I don't think writing down someone's name is such a big deal. But, on the other hand, it's not like her name was an essential part of my little post, or that the post was that freaking hilarious to be worth sharing with the world anyway, and I would've taken it down.

You know, all I was really trying to do was something nice. I spent like eight paragraphs ragging on this guy Tony for making a deliberate choice to behave like a cretin, and I thought why not throw in a brief sentence at the end mentioning that not everyone at the theatre is a total jackass. Oh, wait, here's why not, cause it'll get you fired. Well, if I'd known that, I'd've kept my mouth shut.

But, now that I'm no longer welcome at the theatre, I can tell you what I really think of my co-workers:

Erika: overreacting bitch, I already mentioned it but I thought I'd mention it again.

Jonathan: no complaints.

Felix: can't really understand his accent, but no complaints.

Shawn: kind of intense.

Jim: thinks his desk is some sort of garbage can.

Tony: other folks at the theatre (dare I name names???) think he should be thrown out in the middle of 42nd Street — I just wish he'd shut up.

You know what thought came over me? Maybe they're afraid that thanks to my security breach — like I'm working at the CIA or something — there'll be some sort of lawsuit on their hands. Which is kind of weird, because I wonder if I can sue them for firing me because I wrote something on my own private website, outside of work, using none of the resources at the theatre. Fine, maybe they don't like being mentioned (then I'm sure they'll love this post), but it's not my fault if their security is lax, and it's not like I signed some sort of non-disclosure agreement preventing me from ever discussing the details of my job. Besides, where does it end? Would they have fired me if, instead of publishing a name in a blog that only five or six people have ever looked at, I casually mentioned this name to a friend?

I think we all need to band together to do something about the Man interfering in our personal affairs. In the meantime, I'll be fantasizing about revenge, like the revenge I never got on the asses at Sparknotes who let me go. Someday, I'll become world dictator, and then to the plutonium mines with them all!

0 comments: