In 1995 I worked for a Publishing house in Gaithersburg MD. I had worked for them for 10 years and was now a Director of the Company. During the negotiations for a large mainframe computer purchase, I was told I would be required to lie to the seller and tell them that they had agreed to include a particular subsystem “free” in the overall purchase of the system.

Now I had JUST completed the negotiation of THAT subsystem the DAY BEFORE they asked me to do this so there was NO WAY the seller was going to believe this. I informed the owners that I couldn’t do that and this began the beginning of the termination of my employment with the publishing house.

They were sure I was going to have difficulty getting a replacement job and offered me 30 days severance pay on the condition that I accept a “beeper” and be on call if they needed me until I accepted a job at another company. I accepted and required everything in writing. My last day of work was to be that Friday.

Unbeknownst to them, I had already interviewed with America Online (AOL) accepted a job, and they easily arranged for me to begin work on the following Monday. On that Monday my new boss and I put the beeper in a Courier bag emblazoned with AOL’s LOGO and sent it over to my old company. An old friend of mine in the old company said the beeper was still going off as the package was carried through the office to the owner's desk.

I REALLY enjoyed that double-dipping last month of extra pay while I was getting paid from AOL too!

Karma says they shouldn’t have asked me to blatantly lie when it would have been so obvious…

Good thing I’d gotten my severance terms in writing too.