Fame is Fleeting, Friends are Forever: The Dream Job Becomes a Nightmare Part II
Sure, in often abstract ways, we are continuously making choices in our lives that reflect our values. A life of crime or an honest day’s work. Hoarding everything for ourselves or giving things away to the poor. These are usually moral processes that occur over time.
But these choices are rarely as concrete and obvious as the decision I had to make on Saturday.
At 4 p.m. on Saturday, I was scheduled for a taping at MTV Studios in Santa Monica to be interviewed for their video game special (as noted earlier in this blog). I had directions, emails about what room I had to go to, etc., it just came down to going two miles to the other side of Santa Monica.
Also on 4 p.m. on Saturday, was RussoGate Barbeque 2K6, a last hurrah in Hollywood for recently made ex-employees of the Media Data Corporation.
Since I am car-less, I could make one of two choices:
1. Take a bus to MTV and appear on a television near you in the near future.
2. Hitch a ride with Tim and John at 2 p.m. to go to the barbeque.
Well, friends, I’d like to think I made the right choice. Ultimately, as Andy Bleyer put it, Fame is Fleeting, but Friends are Forever. Also I have stage fright.
So, anyway, the barbeque was definitely worth going to on its own merits because of the poignancy of it all. Let’s face it, most of us have attended work-related social functions and while they can be entertaining, a lot of it is idle chitchat about each others boring lives possibly tinged with gossip/rumors about others at work.
This was different. Not only was it likely that this was the last time some of us would ever see each other, but some of us had outstanding relevant stories to tell either about work or about our life situations since being laid off.
“Jigger might get deported!”
“I might get evicted tomorrow!”
“I’m gonna sue everyone!”
“Jasna has breast implants!”
Many of us were at least casual friends before, but now we felt almost like a brotherhood united by the commonality of being screwed over by Frank Russo and not having any money. It was great.
With that said, here’s a little update about what went down at the good ol’ Media Data Corp. on Thursday:
Claire, Adam, Rob and I walked on to a scene in the board room Thursday that was rapidly heating up…
A collection of about 20 employees sat around incensed about new information such as:
-Apparently our pre-paid legal and health care hadn’t been paid by the company for months, and it’s possible that our taxes also hadn’t been paid either. So, not only does that potentially hurt anyone who had gone to the doctor/hospital in the past couple of months, (including my supervisor John, who broke his arm two weeks ago) it may severely screw up our taxes next year.
-Some of the paychecks issued on May 15th bounced (the people who waited to deposit or cash them were suddenly out 5 weeks pay + vacation. )
With that in mind, the people spouting comments like:
“This community was duped.” And “This is outright theft!” And “When the wool has been pulled this far over our eyes, how can they expect us to help them?”
During the employees only-meeting, we discussed our options… walking out ASAP, going to the press with the story, going to the labor board, filing a class-action lawsuit or simply going straight to the cops. For the short term, we decided to come up with a list of written questions to ask them and go from there.
Mr. Matt Karam, our long-haired, motorcycle riding superstar, was our mouthpiece during the meeting at it quickly became The Executives VS. The Laid-Offs.
“How are we going to be able to trust you?” Karam began, with D.K. staring at the ceiling with a glum look on his face. Karam listed all of our problems and misgivings, including our incredulous disbelief that D.K. and crew knew nothing of these things.
The consummate company man, D.K. tried to play things off again.
“These are all legitimate questions, and they do point to things that are wrong, but this is all because of one guy.”
A second Matt, Scheiber, who’d worked his way up to a high position in the company after 2 years, spoke up.
“You’ve given a lot of speeches here, but at what point do you take responsibility as the CEO and President? Aren’t you supposed to know these things?”
D.K. began up with excuses about how a CEO can’t do everything, and how he has to worry about the “macro” issues or running a company, not the “micro” concerns. HA!
After more questions, and an impassioned plea from D.K.’s brother, a quasi MDC employee: “Don’t accuse my brother of nothin’! He wasn’t the only one, I gave Russo $75,000 of my own money, so I didn’t know either!”, D.K. once again tried to throw out his favorite buzzwords:
“I’m focused on going forward with this company. Mistakes have been made, but if we don’t focus on what we need to focus on, we’re not going to get any money.”
While M.F. was able to keep his corporate cool this whole time, Vice President Jasna was combatative the entire time. After Karam suggested the employees take computers and hold them as “collateral”, Jasna shouted “You say you don’t trust us, well I don’t trust you. Whose to say you won’t steal everything? There’s been some stuff stolen off my desk!”
D.K., meanwhile, was beginning to get flustered after being caught in a lie about his knowledge about the health care payments…. He told us that he lost more “than all of us combined” and called our line of question a “witchhunt.”
“This witchhunt is ridiculous! Everyone needs to make a choice and decide whether they want to help us focus on going forward with this company, or get out of our way!”
At that point, an angry D.K. stands up and walks out of the room.
It then came down to a piece of paper. If you signed it, you offered to stay on and volunteer in the hopes that the company could pull of a deal, something M.F. even acknowledged was a “longshot.”
The rest of us walked out and never looked back…ready for a weekend barbeque.
Sure, in often abstract ways, we are continuously making choices in our lives that reflect our values. A life of crime or an honest day’s work. Hoarding everything for ourselves or giving things away to the poor. These are usually moral processes that occur over time.
But these choices are rarely as concrete and obvious as the decision I had to make on Saturday.
At 4 p.m. on Saturday, I was scheduled for a taping at MTV Studios in Santa Monica to be interviewed for their video game special (as noted earlier in this blog). I had directions, emails about what room I had to go to, etc., it just came down to going two miles to the other side of Santa Monica.
Also on 4 p.m. on Saturday, was RussoGate Barbeque 2K6, a last hurrah in Hollywood for recently made ex-employees of the Media Data Corporation.
Since I am car-less, I could make one of two choices:
1. Take a bus to MTV and appear on a television near you in the near future.
2. Hitch a ride with Tim and John at 2 p.m. to go to the barbeque.
Well, friends, I’d like to think I made the right choice. Ultimately, as Andy Bleyer put it, Fame is Fleeting, but Friends are Forever. Also I have stage fright.
So, anyway, the barbeque was definitely worth going to on its own merits because of the poignancy of it all. Let’s face it, most of us have attended work-related social functions and while they can be entertaining, a lot of it is idle chitchat about each others boring lives possibly tinged with gossip/rumors about others at work.
This was different. Not only was it likely that this was the last time some of us would ever see each other, but some of us had outstanding relevant stories to tell either about work or about our life situations since being laid off.
“Jigger might get deported!”
“I might get evicted tomorrow!”
“I’m gonna sue everyone!”
“Jasna has breast implants!”
Many of us were at least casual friends before, but now we felt almost like a brotherhood united by the commonality of being screwed over by Frank Russo and not having any money. It was great.
With that said, here’s a little update about what went down at the good ol’ Media Data Corp. on Thursday:
Claire, Adam, Rob and I walked on to a scene in the board room Thursday that was rapidly heating up…
A collection of about 20 employees sat around incensed about new information such as:
-Apparently our pre-paid legal and health care hadn’t been paid by the company for months, and it’s possible that our taxes also hadn’t been paid either. So, not only does that potentially hurt anyone who had gone to the doctor/hospital in the past couple of months, (including my supervisor John, who broke his arm two weeks ago) it may severely screw up our taxes next year.
-Some of the paychecks issued on May 15th bounced (the people who waited to deposit or cash them were suddenly out 5 weeks pay + vacation. )
With that in mind, the people spouting comments like:
“This community was duped.” And “This is outright theft!” And “When the wool has been pulled this far over our eyes, how can they expect us to help them?”
During the employees only-meeting, we discussed our options… walking out ASAP, going to the press with the story, going to the labor board, filing a class-action lawsuit or simply going straight to the cops. For the short term, we decided to come up with a list of written questions to ask them and go from there.
Mr. Matt Karam, our long-haired, motorcycle riding superstar, was our mouthpiece during the meeting at it quickly became The Executives VS. The Laid-Offs.
“How are we going to be able to trust you?” Karam began, with D.K. staring at the ceiling with a glum look on his face. Karam listed all of our problems and misgivings, including our incredulous disbelief that D.K. and crew knew nothing of these things.
The consummate company man, D.K. tried to play things off again.
“These are all legitimate questions, and they do point to things that are wrong, but this is all because of one guy.”
A second Matt, Scheiber, who’d worked his way up to a high position in the company after 2 years, spoke up.
“You’ve given a lot of speeches here, but at what point do you take responsibility as the CEO and President? Aren’t you supposed to know these things?”
D.K. began up with excuses about how a CEO can’t do everything, and how he has to worry about the “macro” issues or running a company, not the “micro” concerns. HA!
After more questions, and an impassioned plea from D.K.’s brother, a quasi MDC employee: “Don’t accuse my brother of nothin’! He wasn’t the only one, I gave Russo $75,000 of my own money, so I didn’t know either!”, D.K. once again tried to throw out his favorite buzzwords:
“I’m focused on going forward with this company. Mistakes have been made, but if we don’t focus on what we need to focus on, we’re not going to get any money.”
While M.F. was able to keep his corporate cool this whole time, Vice President Jasna was combatative the entire time. After Karam suggested the employees take computers and hold them as “collateral”, Jasna shouted “You say you don’t trust us, well I don’t trust you. Whose to say you won’t steal everything? There’s been some stuff stolen off my desk!”
D.K., meanwhile, was beginning to get flustered after being caught in a lie about his knowledge about the health care payments…. He told us that he lost more “than all of us combined” and called our line of question a “witchhunt.”
“This witchhunt is ridiculous! Everyone needs to make a choice and decide whether they want to help us focus on going forward with this company, or get out of our way!”
At that point, an angry D.K. stands up and walks out of the room.
It then came down to a piece of paper. If you signed it, you offered to stay on and volunteer in the hopes that the company could pull of a deal, something M.F. even acknowledged was a “longshot.”
The rest of us walked out and never looked back…ready for a weekend barbeque.
