To Turkeys, With Laughs

I read this on the Fortune site and thought that it was pretty funny!


http://askannie.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/11/24/the-biggest-turkey-i-ever-hired


If you work in more than one place in your life, you'll probably get to work for some turkeys. It can't be avoided, they're everywhere.

Allow me, on this turkey day, to give you some examples.


I worked as a service writer in a Porsche-Audi dealership. The service manager knew nothing about cars, he was a retired Army sergeant*.

A mechanic cut out a large chunk of an Audi's body to make it easier to remove the engine. This weakened the car's body. I reprimanded him. The service manager backed him up and fired me!

Long story short, the customer sued, the mechanic got fired, the service manager lasted another 90 days and Porsche-Audi pulled the dealership franchise. I think the customer got a new car, but I'm not sure.

* I'm a military brat and have the utmost respect for those in uniform. He was in the wrong job at the wrong time.


I was hired to help open a new '$99.95 Car Paint'. One of the pay incentives was a production bonus for turning out more than a specific number of cars in a week. As assistant manager, one of my jobs was turning in the weekly production figures.

For a couple of weeks, my boss, the owner, told me that he had went ahead and done the paperwork for me. Which helped him cover up the fact that he was doing paint jobs on his friends, relatives and neighbors cars, without them going on the franchise records. Still, I felt sure that we had made bonus production.

When I opened the shop one Saturday, I couldn't find the copy paper for the copier. When I found the copier paper, I found the certificate from the franchise company with my name on it for making the bonus. I made a copy, put the original back. Never got paid for the bonus.

I quit the next month and went to Hollywood with my first screenplay.


If you go to the Ask Annie site, check out the link where employees get to talk about HR managers.

I don't know if it's posted or not, but I wrote about my experience with 'Ordeals', the tech writing company in my book.

IF it makes the Ask Annie blog, great.

IF NOT, then I'll write about it in the next post.

I don't know if HR stands for Human Resources or Helpless Rejects