Nixonian ethics with a B&E and missing time tapes

Have you ever thought that someone had been in your home while you weren't there? It's a feeling that I've really only had once. It was more than just a feeling, the burglars left evidence. To write about this will anger the perpetrators of the crime. I know this because of a recent discovery that writing about this event caused great upset to the people who hired the burglars.

Several years ago, I'd been fired from a job for allowing my physician to view a videotape of my workplace. There's quite a story to tell with that, but I'm gonna stick to the burglary and the Nixonian edit job.

I had a lawsuit for health related reasons and the former employer scheduled a deposition. One of those little voices told me to take a rather large box of paperwork with me, and I did put the box in my vehicle. The deposition was scheduled about 45 minutes from Kalamazoo in Battle Creek. This was the first of many red flags.

So I arrived for the deposition that was being done at the office of the company doing the transcription. Second red flag. The corporation flew an attorney in for the day from Pittsburgh. This was the third red flag. The lawsuit didn't merit the extreme expense of the attorney and his travel. Let's just say that the corporation spent many times, probably much more than ten times what it would have cost them to settle the lawsuit.

So the dickweed attorney from Pittsburgh gets started with the deposition. It quickly became apparent that he was doing everything possible to waste time. The deposition lasted something like 4 or 5 hours. Like I said, he was doing everything possible to keep me there as long as possible. That little voice told me that the guy was stalling for something. Plus, he had that guilty look on his face, that hand caught in the cookie jar look.

So I FINALLY get done with the deposition and my urge to jump across the table and crush the maggot attorney's skull. Then I drove the 45 minutes home with my box of documents. But I still knew that they were keeping me there, 45 minutes from home for a reason other than the deposition. When I got home, I found out why.

I had an IBM ThinkPad laptop that was given to me a couple years prior. It had a malfunctioning monitor. If you turned it on, sometimes the screen wouldn't work. So I just had to try it again and again until it stared working normally. When I got home, I really didn't sense anything moved or that the dogs were upset. My laptop was beside my bed on a nightstand. When I turned it on, it wouldn't work (as usual). So I went through the process of messing with it until it worked. When it did start, the display had an error message that the download of the memory from the computer was not complete.

Yep, they'd been in my house to download the memory from the computers. Everything made sense after that. I was glad that I took the box of documents with me. What were they looking for? I think it was mostly to see who I'd been talking to about being fired and other nefarious and corrupt deeds by the corporation. I believe that they were worried about the media becoming involved. Actually the getting fired part is what got me into screenwriting and would probably make quite a movie.

The woman who did the transcription called me over the weekend to clarify some of the words used in my answers. She also told me how unusual the entire situation was. The corporation was paying her top dollar to complete the transcription immediately and on the weekend. There were many other red flags that she expressed in regard to the corporation's attorney and the circumstances of the deposition. Paying for the deposition was probably nothing compared to paying burglars.

One of the things that the corporation and its board of directors had pulled involved tampering with a different transcription. In the process of firing me, the corporation had to have a tape recorded hearing with the union present. When the corporation did a transcription of the audio recording, almost everything said by my union representative was missing. Poof! Gone! There were other changes made to the "official" transcript of the event.

I brought my own digital audio recorder and carried it in my shirt pocket. The union wanted to know what was missing from the official transcript and the corporation responded with bizarre statements about words and deeds on my part that never occurred. My own digital recorder is a bit complicated, and I thought that it hadn't worked. So for several months the corrupt corporation makes numerous bizarre and self-serving statements about what happened in the gaps. At least Nixon just said there were gaps and didn't attempt to fill in the gaps with fraud. There was also a signed and dated affidavit from the corporate hearing officer about what was missing from the audio transcription.

A few months later, I found out that I didn't know how to rewind the recorder. I had the entire investigation on audio. This was prior to the deposition and the breaking and entering. Let's just say that the company and the union both went from corrupt and attempting to be professional to something that was a mutual intent on doing anything to avoid the truth of what happened.

I even went to the board of directors for the corporation with the recording and letters describing the corruption and criminality of what happened. The board of directors included a public university president and a former state governor. I halfway expected that a university president and former state governor would not be party to such corruption. Boy was I wrong. The response from the corporation only reaffirmed the Nixonian ethics and integrity of the board of directors and corporation. It is worth mentioning that the board of directors changed their Code of Ethics and removed their Code of Ethics from public use and view because of their Nixonian ethics and integrity. All because of little old me.

Somewhere in this process, I discovered that the corporation's CEO was scheduled to give a speech on ethics at a major university. How could I possibly sit still and let someone like that speak about ethics when I knew the true nature of the corporation, the CEO and the board of directors? So I sent some correspondence to the president of the university (not the same institution as the member of the board of directors) and key members of the staff for the business school at the university.

A few weeks later, I received a letter from the university. I had been invited to attend the CEO's speech on ethics at the university. Did I go? Hell no! After all the corruption and criminality that the CEO and corporation had been party to, the last thing I was going to do was get involved in something more devious and more criminal and directed towards me. This would have been a long way from Kalamazoo, and I'd have been screwed if something crazy happened to me.

Eventually I settled with the corporation for a paltry amount of money. The union absolutely sold me out to the corporation. The union actually had no problem whatsoever that the hearing transcripts were modified and that perjury had been committed by issuing a completely false signed statement. One thing that I did not do was to sign any sort of non-disclosure agreement. The corporation wanted me to sign something saying I'd never work for them. That was pretty funny. Working for the corporation is right up there on my list of potential employment with being a fluffer for HIV positive porn stars and being Dicktard Cheney's hunting buddy.

The ironic thing is that I actually need to thank the corrupt board of directors and would like to personally thank the corrupt university president and the corrupt former state governor. Seriously, this event was what brought me into screenwriting. Without the corruption of these people, there is almost no way that I would have ever ventured into screenwriting. And I'm actually not bad at coming up with concepts and utilizing the craft of screenwriting to create a competent screenplay. So these corrupt and unethical individuals did me a huge favor and gave me a tremendous gift.

It was my rather brief description of being fired while speaking to cinematographer James Glennon on the telephone that propelled me into screenwriting. Jim thought the Nixonian ethics of the corporation and my attempt to remedy a lethal workplace hazard might make a nice concept for a screenplay. Maybe, maybe not! But it got me to write, and I'm truly very thankful for that.

(It's worth mentioning that the initial problem that caused me to send a videotape of my former place of employment to my physician was eventually repaired and partially resolved. I had to literally beg Michigan's governor Jennifer Granholm to get it done, but she saw the obvious hazards and participated in remedying the most dangerous condition. She did absolutely nothing to remedy other obvious problems or to assist me or recognize me in any way whatsoever. I was lucky that she was governor at the time, because a MIOSHA (Michigan's OSHA) employee told me that there would have been no intervention by the prior Republican governor.)