TAMPA – Carrying cocaine, drug paraphernalia and $1,000 in cash, the three young men in the 1983 Toyota Tercel thought they were entering the toll booth for the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway.

They tried to blow past it, authorities said, but didn’t get far.

It turned out to be the gate to MacDill Air Force Base. [full story...]

1. You are hired at the start of a slow business season when there simply isn’t enough billable work coming in to sustain pay for two web designers, and you are the junior of the two.
2. You are roundly chastised for arriving 15 minutes late to the office even though others in the office routinely arrive that late or later.
3. You are the only employee not sitting in a faux Aeron chair. Your chair is a run-of-the-mill discount-office-store number with a busted hydraulic cylinder, stuck at its lowest height. Ergonomic ouch. You finally get an “upgrade” back to parity with everyone else three days before getting canned.
4. Policies and procedures are never formally explained. You are never given the chance to get the hang of how jobs are supposed to progress there.
5. You are explicitly not asked to join in any meetings for existing or prospective clients.
6. By the end of your first month a new designer is interviewed, hired, and scheduled to start the Monday after your 3-month review.
7. Your 3-month review coincides with the end-of-summer, a historically ripe time for lay-offs.
8. A week before your 3-month review you are asked to relinquish exclusive administrative rights to your computer and provide free access to your user profile. They want to ensure access to your files “in case anything happens.”