June 11, 1998
Leo,
I am writing to express my gratitude for the last seven months of employment. I regret that I was denied an opportunity to inform you of this during an exit interview. I also regret the events surrounding my last day at your company.
I wish to make you aware that I have spoken to my attorney in regards to the parting remarks/events on the part of Chris Brennan. Not only did Chris threaten physical violence against me but also expressed interest in disparaging my professional reputation with my new employers. If either of these actions are performed I will not hesitate to take legal action. I should also hope to retrieve any and all of my possessions that disappeared while being packed up for me. Among these include a personal directory of addresses [a print out of the CdC database—ED.], my offer letter from my new employers, and several lists of phone numbers. These materials may be sent to the above address.
I feel that if Chris’ behavior is not modified that your business will suffer and your venture into the Internet will fail. Chris has severe problems with prioritizing and implementing structure. By promising clients product with unrealistic deadlines, no follow-up, and at no charge, the web department has been taxed with unbillable jobs and clients have been displeased. Chris tends to not only make more work for himself than necessary but he also feels that he must take on every task at hand while not accomplishing any of them in any sort of timely or complete manner.
Chris has put himself in a managerial position yet he does not communicate goals, assign tasks, take suggestions, or have faith in the abilities of his fellow employees; all principals being fundamental to management.
What Chris needs to manage is his anger. Time and again he has verbally humiliated and degraded his fellow workers (myself included), creating an intolerable work environment.
I sincerely hope that Chris gets the help that he needs and that your business does not continue to suffer from his behavior. I believe that you are headed in the right direction but need to rethink your structure and proclivity towards nepotism.
Sincerely,
Michael White
P.S. The Argus Database Project was done, in its entirety, by the end of the week of February 19th. using Allaire’s ColdFusion (a product I had been encouraged to research and use by Chris). However, Chris’ sudden narrow-minded devotion to Microsoft’s products along with the inability to delegate responsibility or prioritize caused the waste of hundreds of nonbillable hours and the potential loss of yet another client.
Obviously, the above is not a reader letter, but one I was forced to write after being fired (two days after putting in my formal notice) from my job at Leo J. Brennan. Seems I have a real knack for being fired after I resign—faithful readers might remember my tale of leaving Blockbuster from CdC #5.
Yes, I felt that the time had come to leave Brennan. I couldn’t take the owner’s son storming around, yelling and screaming about some problem or another—problems that he was usually the cause of but he was never one to take blame, nor to realize the consequences of his actions. Seems that a lot of alcoholics act that way. Yes, our boy was a booze hound from way back and he was surrounded by enablers—at least everyone in the office gave Chris a ride to or from work at one time or another (his license being revoked due to his repeated D.U.I. charges).
Things really started to fall apart at work sometime in mid-February after Chris came back from a Microsoft conference. I don’t know if they put something in the water there but he was converted in his absence (seems that he had also fallen off the wagon pretty hard too—I say this due to a drunken phone call I received one night from him at 2 AM) to the Ways of Microsoft. He decided when he returned that I was his enemy for I used such blasphemous items as Coldfusion (instead of Microsoft’s Active Server Pages), Javascript (instead of VBScript), and Netscape (instead of Internet Explorer). And, like all infidels, he declared a personal jihad against me. Work wasn’t a fun environment anymore.
It wasn’t like Chris knew any of these Microsoft products either but he knew—he just knew—that they were better and, gosh darn it, one of these months he was going "to look into" them. Until then, he’d pretend that he knew what he was talking about (and convince his dad and the salespeople that he knew his stuff too) when he didn’t even know the first thing about web pages—not even bothering to learn HTML and, instead, relying on crappy WYSIWYG web editors like Microsoft’s FrontPage (shudder).
Meanwhile, other things were falling apart for me back in February.
To revisit CdC #5 again, readers might recall my over-long editorial (I think this one beats it) in which I related the fact that I had tied the knot. Well, this year it was severed.
So, in reviewing the last few pages of this ish, I'd have to point out that the biggest reason for this zine’s tardiness wasn’t the 300 extra issues that I have packed up and packed away in my parents’ basement along with almost all of my other belongings. No, that dubious honour goes to my divorce.
Three issues (and almost three years later) it’s over. So what happened? I’ve never been one to keep many secrets from you, my dear readers, and this won’t be an exception. However, I feel that CdC isn’t the proper venue to go into all of the gory details so sometime later this year I'll probably put out more of a perzine along the lines of some of my favorites such as Good Morning, *Unknown* by Jane.
I know this ish is a little light on zine reviews—somewhere I’ve got a box full of zines that were formerly in my "to read" pile. GM,U #3 is the one that I’ve managed to hold on to; to read and re-read. It’s a hand written (but highly legible) collection of incredibly well-written and stirring stories that feels like a healthy catharsis. Issues are a buck (send more for postage to be nice!): 163 Third Ave #395, New York, NY 10003.
Speaking of addresses; if you’re one of those readers or advertisers who were writing to me in Ferndale; I ain’t there no more. Until further notice the PO Box is the best place to reach me. And, if I owe you an issue or a videotape just drop me a note and remind me—make sure you print your address neatly as I’ve misplaced a lot of things in my moving about, having put CdC "on hold" for the last eight months. Hope to see you sooner with #9!
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