05-Stupid is as Stupid Does

Do you ever get mad? I'm sure you do. Sometimes I do too. But here's the difference between you and me. When you get mad, you might yell and grind your teeth, you might fume about it for a bit. But when I get mad, I put myself in a position where I have to send a written letter of apology to the mayor of Orlando. I'm jimpulling. This is my view from the middle. Stupid is as stupid does. As the quote from the movie Forrest Gump, everyone has done something stupid in their life, either through desperation, ignorance, or emotion, or a combination of all three. I've done some stupid things that I'm not proud of, and some people have done some stupid things to me. Now, I don't get mad very often, mainly because I'm not very good at it. I don't know if you realize it or not, but it takes a molecum of talent to be mad properly, and I've never really mastered it, so I mostly just keep myself in control. There's a certain threshold that I don't dare cross, because when I do stupid, stuff happens that people who are good at being mad can seem to handle, but I can't. When I cross that line, my face turns beat red, I lose the ability to form intelligent sentences. I start to shake, and I will inevitably make a bad decision that leads to additional cascading problems. One of my earliest stupidity moments came when I was in the fourth grade in public school. I had a teacher who really didn't seem to like me much. I'm not sure what I did to deserve it that the teacher called my mother to complain about something I did or didn't do. When I got home and found out that this had happened, I was furious. I was mad for the rest of the day and all night long and into the next morning. When the first thing I did was walk up to the teacher and say, man, I quote, why the hell did you call my mother? Well, as you can imagine, bad language notwithstanding, that didn't go over well, and I was sent to the office. I think they called my mother again in one of the other episodes in this podcast series and talk about a memo I sent to my boss once when I was mad. I don't remember what I was mad about, but I was steaming It was before email and we were all still typing paper memos to each other. So I sat down and banged out this memo, complete with all sorts of inflammatory statements and accusations. What I should have done is type it up and sit on it for a day before delivering it. If I had done that, I wouldn't have delivered it at all. But instead I banged out the memo and stuck it in my boss's mailbox. Stupid is as stupid does. The next morning, I came in and in my mailbox is my memo folded up. When I unfolded it, it looked like a Nazi censor had gotten hold of it. Every inflammatory statement and every harsh word had been cut out of the piece of paper with a pair of scissors. My boss initialed it at the bottom without additional comment, and put it back in my mailbox. Message received and understood. It was obvious that my boss knew I was out of control and just need to cool down. To his credit, he could have taken harsh actions against me, but he didn't. That's all he did was cut up the memo. Nothing was ever said about it. Again, another shining moment in my career. Came when I was working for Susquehanna Broadcasting when they owned the Florida News Network and WKIS. I was a news anchor and reporter and had not yet taken over as operations manager. But don't underestimate the power of the press, even a lowly radio reporter like me. One night, a little past eleven PM, I received a frantic call from a friend of mine who was in downtown Orlando and had been locked out of a parking garage where she had stowed her car while attending an event nearby. Apparently the garage closed at eleven o'clock and she was unable to get to her car. She was stranded downtown late in the evening in a not so great part of town. She wasn't able to reach her husband, and I think I was the only other phone number she had on her, so she called me. Oh joy, she called and was very upset at the clue the garage. Apparently there was a sign somewhere, but it wasn't very prominent. I don't think the garages downtown do this anymore. She was outraged that they would lock her out and not let her get to her car and basically strand her on the dark streets of Orlando after hours. Her angst was contagious, and I was completely appalled and furious about the whole thing. Here's where the stupid part comes in. As a news reporter, I had a full Rolodex. You remember those little card files with names and addresses and phone numbers on them. I had contact information for all sorts of city, county, and state officials, from the governor on down. So I told my friend to hang on that I would come pick her up, but first I was going to do something about this. Hoo boy, told you not good at this. So I pull out my trusty Rolodex and look up the phone number, the home phone number of the fellow who was the transportation director for the City of Orlando. Why I had his home number, I don't know, but I did kind of wish I didn't. This was the guy who headed up the departments that controlled the city parking garages. So I called and apparently woke him up. I don't remember exactly what I said to him on the phone, but it wasn't good. It wasn't smart and totally regrettable. But the gist was that his rules about locking out people from the garages and stranding them on the streets. Were completely out of line and putting my friend in danger. I blamed the phone company for allowing my phone to work that night. While someone has to take responsibility, I certainly couldn't be considered as responsible at this point. Probably the dumbest thing I did was identify myself as a member of the reporting staff at WKIS. Yeah, that was brilliant. I'm sure that would have had an effect on my MENSA application. Anyway, the next day at work, I get called into the boss's office. He said they got a call from the transportation director who related the prior evening's telephone conversation. Now, the transportation director could have kicked up such a stink about it that he could have insisted I be fired. He could have screamed and yelled at my boss for allowing such an irresponsible person to be part of the reporting staff of a respected radio operation. But to his credit, according to my boss, as upset as he was with me about the situation, he said he actually understood why I was so angry. That I was just afraid for my friend who is stranded downtown. But nonetheless, the phone call after eleven PM was totally inappropriate. No argument there so, in lieu of any other horrible things that could have happened to me, my boss insisted that I write a formal letter of apology to both the transportation director and to his boss, the Mayor of Orlando. Nothing more came of it, but I learned a lesson about keeping my emotions in check when you have the power of the press at your disposal. So these were stupid things done out of emotion and ignorance. Now for something stupid done out of desperation. After I was fired from the Florida News Network in WKIS in nineteen eighty seven, I spent ten months without a steady job and instead wound up doing a lot of weird things to make ends meet. One of those weird things was a sales job for a company called touchstat. I think I can talk about them now because the company no longer exists, at least not the same company I worked for. They made thermostats, and I was recruited by a couple of people who trained salespeople to sell them door to door. I answer to help wanted ad in the newspaper. You remember those the forerunner of Indeed and LinkedIn. Now, these people who hired me and proceeded to train me were independent contractors who didn't actually work for the company. These two were slick and slippery, to say the least, although I didn't recognize it at the time. They were very good at hiding their shenanigans, and I was among several people brought in that got caught in this trap. They had this scam going where I could either sell six thousand dollars worth of thermostats and work for no pay until it reached that threshold, or pay them the six grand out of my pocket and start earning money immediately. Well. I opted for door number two, as did a couple of other recruits. The forest Gump moment should have run, Forest Run When I had the chance, I borrowed the money from my father, which just made the whole stupid thing even more painful. Turns out, the price point of the thermostats was such that paying off that sixth grand would have taken months. Also, there was no real market for the stupid things. Who buys a thermostaff from a door to door salesman. Anyway, There was a line in the James Cameron movie Titanic where Billy Zane says, a real man makes his own luck. Now, every time I see that movie, every time I hear that phrase, my blood pressure goes through the roof, because this is what our friendly neighborhood thermostats swindlers love to tell us. When none of us could sell the ridiculous contraptions, I wound up hiring an attorney, but ultimately had to drop the lawsuit because a solid case couldn't be made. The two Slickwillies left town and I never heard from them again. Finally, under the heading of stupid things that I've seen other people do, one doozy was one. I was working for Packs and Broadcasting. In addition into running the Florida News Network, I also programmed WWNZAM Wins when it was a news station. Overnight we ran network talk shows from midnight to six AM. I hired a fellow by the name of Trevor as a board operator. It was an entry level position and aside from working the graveyard shift, it was an extremely easy gig. You just had to pot up the network and run some commercials. About a week after Trevor started, I'm heading into work around five thirty six am. I'm listening to the radio station on my car radio. But weird things are happening. No commercials were playing in the brakes. There were tones and bleeps and stuff from the network that were not supposed to be going on the air. So I speed my way into the station. When I get there, no Trevor anywhere. There was a handwritten note left on the console that said he was sick of the job and wasn't going to work there anymore. He had apparently abandoned the radio station sometime in the middle of the night. Luckily he left the network audio up on the station. Of the wise, we would have had nothing but dead air. Now. As stupid as that sounds, there's an epilogue to this story that elevates it to a whole new level of stupidity. Jump ahead about five years or so. Packson had moved the network and radio station to a new location, along with several other radio stations. My good friend John Frost had taken over as director of programming for the stations, while I assumed the director of operations role for the network. I was walking through the lobby one day, and who do I see sitting filling out a job application? But my old buddy Trevor. Yeah, the same guy who had walked out, leaving the station flapping in the breeze. I knew John was in the process of hiring board operators for one of the other stations in the cluster. So I ran back to my office and reached into my file cabinet and a folder labeled Trevor. I had the saved handwritten note that Trevor had left me the night he decided to take a powder. I went over to John and I asked him if he was about to interview a guy named Trevor for one of the board oppositions. He said, as a matter of fact, I am, so I showed him the handwritten note. H Trevor didn't get the job. So there I was in the middle of a lot of stupidity. Trevor going a wall from his board op shift and then coming back to apply for a job at the same station was not my doing, but some of it. Telling my fourth grade teacher where to go, a late night phone call to abuse my power of the press, and attempting to read my boss the Riot Act and a memo. We're all my doing, and I can't blame anyone else. Stupid is as stupid does. I'm jimpulling and that's my view from the middle. In the next episode, have you ever taken a thrill ride on a gurney down the halls of a hospital? It can happen after cancer surgery. The pimple next on My View from the Middle. Every two months wa