PART I: Booth Gets Fired

Last Friday I got fired from my job.

NO – not my marketing director position with nextround.net and stillawesome.com. I got fired from my day job. Unfortunately, I didn’t do anything really awesome to get fired, like bone the boss’s wife or get caught drinking at 9 AM or something cool like that. I guess I just sucked.

If you have never been fired here is how the conversation goes when you get fired:

Friday Morning:

Me (Already 20 minutes late to work): “Morning, Bossman. Did anyone make coffee?”

Boss: “No”

Me: “I have to get some before we get started.”

Boss: “I need to talk to you before the staff meeting.”

Me: “Alright, let me just grab a cup of coffee.”

Boss: “No, this is important.”

Me: “Alright, what’s up?”

Boss: “This isn’t working out.”

Me: “What do you mean this isn’t working out?”

Boss (after long awkward pause): “We are going to have to let you go.”

Me (a little stunned): “Is it something I did or said?”

Boss: “It just isn’t working out. I will give you a couple of minutes to get your stuff together, then I need your key to the office and your parking card.”

Me: “Aaaah, wait a minute. What about the commissions you owe me?”

Boss: “We will get those to you in a timely manner.”

Me: “Aaaah, are you going to give me any kind of severance or anything?”

Boss: “No, all I need from you is your key to the office and your parking card, after you collect your things.”

Me (trying to think of one last way to fuck this guy over): “Aaaah, okay. First let me get that coffee.”

Whenever put in an awkward situation like this you need to do something weird and unexpected to throw the other person off guard. In this situation, I went and made coffee before I started boxing up my stuff. Coffee in hand, I told my boss I’d be right back with the access card to the parking deck. Except I never came back. I plan to make getting that card back the biggest pain in the ass that bastard has ever experienced.

So after an entire 5 months in the workforce, I am back on the streets. The strange thing is that I am sure I will be ten times busier now than I ever was when I had that shitty day job. Don’t believe me? My current jobs consist of:

Marketing Director for Nextround.net

Managing Partner for Cool & Tough Racing

Unrepentant Degenerate Gambler

Collector of Unemployment

“I have a job. I mean, I don’t get paid for it. But it is my job.” — Ben in “Knocked Up”

PART II: The Unemployment Office

After getting fired some people get really depressed, after going to the unemployment office I can see why.

I got up Monday morning to go file for unemployment. I’ve been told that finding a job is a battle.

Going to the unemployment office was my first chance to survey the competition. I arrived a little before the mandatory presentation they make you listen to, so I had 15 minutes to do reconnaissance on the upcoming battle. Almost 300 enemy combatants awaited the presentation. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

The first thing I quickly realized was that I looked different from the rest of the competition. In a room of 300 people I stuck out like a soar thumb. A very white soar thumb.

The next thing that struck me was how at ease my enemies were. They had a distinct advantage: they had been in this battle several times before.

Enemy 1: A short guy with baggy jean shorts, tear drop tattoos under his eyes, and a massive gold chain that looked like would get pretty heavy after a couple of hours. He was wearing sunglasses inside. I have to admit I was kind of intimated by Enemy 1 as his levels of Cool & Toughness seemed to surpass my own.

Enemy 2: The guy who started playing mind games by attempting to instill a false sense of confidence in me. He started by asking me, “What these things that we’re sitting in front of?” I informed him they were computers. His clever ruse didn’t end there however; he had Borat-like dedication. When we were asked to take the eligibility survey on the computers he pretended like he didn’t know how to use a keyboard.

Enemy 3: The loud woman who kept asking questions that had already been answered while her two kids took turns running full speed into everyone in the room. I am extremely worried about Enemy 3 going forward as she has a lot of positive attributes: 1) She could easily play Division 1 defensive tackle, 2) She is dominate to me at drawing attention to herself, 3) She seems to have superior vocal cords to my own, 4) She is not afraid to interrupt to have herself heard, and 5) She cannot be distracted from her goals by her obligation to parent her children.

Enemy 4: The really important gentleman who spoke on his cell phone throughout the entire presentation. Even standing in line for unemployment could not take precedent over some of the important business calls this guy had to make. This is when I really started to get discouraged. I mean this guy had been there for like 10 minutes and he was already fielding important business calls.

I was beginning to think that I would never find another (paying) job again with this type of competition flooding the market. I was in a dejected state of mind when the presenter told us we could begin filling out our computerized eligibility survey. She informed us it would take approximately 1 hour to finish.

Fifteen minutes later I was done and had successfully qualified for my free money. All four primary enemies were still hunting and pecking at the survey (except Enemy 2 who continued his ploy and had insisted on a written survey). A small victory for Booth, but a giant victory for Booth’s morale.

PART III: Having To Tell The Boys

After leaving the unemployment office, I faced the worst thing you face when you get fired: telling people you got fired. Calling all of my friends and telling them individually would have been time consuming and boring, so I did the reasonable thing.

I posted a new topic on Team Cool & Tough’s NextRound group page:

It was titled: Booth Gets Fired! Booth:

“Today I got fired… (1) Expect an in-depth article on stillawesome.com about what it is like to get fired… (2) If anyone has any ideas of jobs for me, please let me know… (this goes for all of our faithful stillawesome.com readers as well) (3) You assholes better start opening up Bodog accounts soon or I am going to have to move to MLK Boulevard.”

JB: DAGGER!! Why don’t you just teach lessons on how to slay bitches?

Maske: Night Classes on Slaying Bitches is really the only way you’re going to make ends meet.

JB: What about being full time trainer/manager/promoter of young C-puncher? (C-Puncher is the nickname given to the racehorse that Team Cool & Tough just purchased.) Also, did you know this was coming hence the timing of your request for $500 from all your friends and your friends’ friends?

(500 bucks was the minimum investment required to buy an interest in the racehorse.)

Old Balls S-Mac: Great point JB. Boothy timed it perfectly asking for checks 2wks before Windsor.

(Team Cool & Tough hits Windsor, Canada this upcoming weekend for Toast’s bachelor party.)

Maske: What is Beezer’s take on the firing? (Beezer is also my landlord.)

Booth: He is upset about the fact that he won’t be receiving rent anytime soon… but other than that he only cried a little bit.

Then I dropped a bombshell on our friends: Candle Man aka Proto had just called me. I told him I got fired and he giggled uncontrollably at me for about 20 minutes. Then Proto told me that he is relocating to San Antonio. Reread that again: Proto in San Antonio.

JB: Booth I have been thinking about this. Did you wear jean shorts to the office or a meeting or something?

(JB remained baffled by my firing, while the rest of the group had already moved on by Friday afternoon.)

Toast: Proto to San Antonio??? Was anyone else with me when he said that his dream city was Corpus Christi? I heard that San Antonio sucked way worse than Corpus Christi.

Steve Irony: Jesus Christ I go see my doctor about scheduling my Vasectomy and I come back to this. Booth is canned, Proto is moving to Texas, and Beezer will now have to support a new wife and a booth at once. WTF?

Maske: All I want to know is when the last time Proto was in San Antonio. As for Booth, I have no doubt he will land on his feet. And by feet, I mean my couch.

T-Bone: Booth definitely never ceases to amaze me, but let’s get back to what’s important…can we officially start calling Proto: “Proto, Texas Ranger”? I guess we should have taken the hint when he is expected to CLOSE on a NEW HOME with his WIFE in one week that he would do something like this. I’m pretty sure another hint should have been when he named two of his dogs, Walker and Texas Ranger.

Maske: “Proto, Texas Ranger” is officially part of my everyday verbiage.

PART IV: Conclusion

As you can see it didn’t take long for Team Cool & Tough to get over making fun of me and move on to somebody else. They’re equitable like that.

It was a little unnerving however when my landlord/friend later openly talked about evicting me, since I have no money and no intention of paying him any rent. But anyways… This has been fun. I’ll see you at the track.

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