Canning did preserve me

One year ago today I got canned. And I don't mean pickled and then crammed into a small masonry jar and left on a shelf in the cellar for later enjoyment.

I got fired.

And it wasn't by a classy, respectable guy like Donald Trump. I got fired by a middle man because the jerk who really pulled the trigger didn't have the peanuts to do it himself face-to-face.

The middle man was the operations manager, who tipped me off about three weeks prior to doomsday that my head was on the chopping block simply because the owner of the company "didn't like me." The middle man complimented my performance and gave me raises for my hard work, loyalty and an overall job well done many a time. He scored me a 4 out of 5 in reviews, telling me "5 is Jesus walking on water." So I wasn't God, but I was the next-best thing. In the end, none of it mattered.

I could probably write a book as thick as War and Peace on how shitty the owner - "Greg" - treated the employees who made his company money and kept his customers happy every day, but I will keep this blog entry shorter and bittersweet.

Why did I get canned? Three strikes and I was out.

First, I was making too much money. That's why Greg would fire 90 percent of his workforce before they reached their two- or three-year anniversary date. Despite my performance, Greg was a penny pincher and had a long history of firing strong and loyal employees simply because he was too cheap to keep them. He was always looking for a bargain and would have fucked his own mother if it meant he could save 50 cents a week to hire a chimpanzee instead. Greg constantly used the compensation and benefits each employee earned as guilt trips, saying he worked for free so he could provide for our families (yet he slipped a $10,000 check a month to his wife, drove a $30,000 Harley and took 4-5 extravagant vacations a year). He always bragged he was a "share-the-wealth guy," but in reality, he was full of shit.

Second, Greg was an obsessive-compulsive nutjob. He would snap over things like the parking lot - which bordered a forest-like park - not being completely leaf free for every second of the day in the middle of autumn. He was pissed once because he found a decapitated cricket under the pop machine and ranted on how we could miss sweeping something like that. He was a weirdo control freak, too. He would preach about setting up processes, then he would be the lone person to constantly break them, then he would want new processes created so he could break those, too.

In my final days, I caught him bitching about me behind my back and called him on it. I told him if he was so unsatisfied, he should fire me so we could both have closure and move on. But he wouldn't do it because he wanted me to quit because he was getting skull-fucked with unemployment insurance rates with his revolving door policy. "You're done here but you're not done until we tell you you're fired, so wait for that or quit," he snipped.

So I waited. It gave me more time to read his crown jewel, seven-page "company philosophy" that rambled on like it was written by the Unabomber. It was full of more lies and bullshit than the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. And it was about as effective as a triple roll of Charmin: Thick and great for wiping your ass, but not much else.

The third and final straw, I'm fat. He had one of his goons start harassing me about my weight, which unfortunately inevitably led to my "official" firing. My weight has never hindered me from doing anything in life, but I wasn't a perfect 5-foot-5 and 130 pound hobbit like Greg. The goon made repeated comments about my weight and made threats and aggressive posturing akin to "Let's have a bar room brawl." I could have kicked this brown-noser's ass in about 10 seconds, but I'm just a big teddy bear (and didn't want to go to jail over a little bitch goon like that). I wasn't comfortable working under this condition, or any of the others I have mentioned. Thankfully, the middle man finally granted me my wish and terminated me about 1:15 that afternoon a year ago today.

It was really tough at first because I hadn't really done anything "wrong" per se, which on top of all the other bullshit made it a pretty devastating blow. I guess when you finally escape a mental institution, it takes a while to get out of the strait-jacket.

Greg had also been mentally abusive. He told me I "didn't have what it took to take his warehouse to the next level." He constantly preached about the next level like his company was a big-ass Pac-Man game. But the thing is, we never reached that level. There were some minor peaks and valleys in his $4-5 million-a-year business plan, but for the most part, it was a bigger flat-liner than Kevin Bacon. Still, Greg would kind of brainwash you into thinking if he let you go, no one else would take a charity case like yourself in. It took me four months of unemployment to come out from under his thundercloud.

But then in February, the sky cleared. I interviewed at a job that made me an offer the next day for $5,000 more per year than I was making in Greg's gig. New Company had every confidence in my ability to join their $2.9 billion a year operation, which was more than just "the next level" up from the hellhole.

I am much happier now and am eternally thankful I am out of Greg's gulag, but I didn't have complete closure until today, when I sent the following letter out this morning to you know who:

Dear Greg,

Thank you for submitting your application to The Biggest Loser.

While we appreciate your enthusiasm that you believe you are the biggest loser, we regret to tell you that you will not be cast in future episodes because you don't meet our show's largest criteria: You're not fat.

Sure, you have a mullet and a cheesy mustache that makes you look like you went down on a muppet, which both do indeed make you a loser. Add in your personality and overall attitude towards anyone who is not in your mirror space, and you really are a big loser.

Unfortunately, you are only worthy of a big "L" on your forehead and not a spot on the cast for our third season. The show is called The Biggest Loser for a reason, dumb ass. The program is about obese people losing weight. Unfortunately, the show does not revolve around self-centered, skinny, pompous pricks like you.

Rest assured, if The Biggest Loser show was about finding America's biggest loser, we wouldn't bother holding a contest, even with Omarosa around. We'd just do a day-in-the-life documentary about you. But that wouldn't really take us to "the next level" in ratings now, would it?

Thanks for thinking of us anyway and keep watching all of your favorite NBC programming.

Sincerely,
Seymour Butts
Casting Director, The Biggest Loser

Man, that felt good. Yes, it was mean, and I'm probably the biggest loser for mailing that. But it was just what I needed to close that chapter of my life.

I may have not lost much body weight in the last year. But I did lose a great deal of weight that was on my shoulders, which was deteriorating my health and well-being more than anything else. So I guess you could say that canning really did preserve me.