COVER STORY
Three Strikes Dan Casey, Roanoke Times Metro columnist: “I got fired from most of my kid jobs, for various reasons. Baskin Robbins (eating ice cream); Pixie Pizza (refusing to work because of a conflict with school activities); Tripodi's Ristorante (a hair-raising but fun kitchen flour-fight on All You Can Eat Pizza Night). Speed Service Couriers fired me because I met a woman in a bar after work one night and disappeared with her for a couple days (I failed to call in sick, and that was my third strike). I think that was the last time I got fired. Maybe I should try again.”
Submitted
Dan Casey
Flushed Lenore Weiss, architect and principal at Spectrum Design: “I once got fired for insubordination over a pit toilet design. No joke.”
Dan Smith
Lenore Weiss
Downstaged Kathy Guy, former co-owner of Off the Rails theatre company: “I was an insurance adjuster, and the company downsized the office from 12 employees to 2. It sure felt like being fired. I was rude enough to ask the guy who fired me who would fire him after he fired all the ‘worker bees.’ I determined that I wouldn’t work for a large company after that. I went on to start a theatre company.” Submitted
Unguarded Roland Lazenby, author of more than 60 books (his new biography out on October is Magic: The Life of Earvin Magic Johnson): “I had a great professor at VMI who used to tell me life begins once you've been fired. I got fired when I met my wife. I was a lifeguard in Richmond at an apartment pool while I was going to summer school at VCU in 1974, trying to graduate from VMI. I walked in to work the first day, in July, and there was my future wife, working as the gate attendant to the pool. We began some healthy frolicking in the pool during the slow hours. After about six weeks, in August, I was fired out of the blue, without warning. My boss said I was being inattentive. There's no one at the pool, I told him. I will be married to the gate attendant 48 years in May.”
Kathy Guy
Submitted
Roland Lazenby
vbFRONT.com / APRIL 2023 u
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