Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized, And Dismissed

Chapter One: The Job So Terrible You Can Only Hope to Be Fired Work is the province of cattle.-- Dorothy Parker I do not like work, even when someone else does it.-- Mark Twain I have only been fired once. I was let go from an office job where the boss told me that he was firing me because he wanted someone to work for him who, when he said, "Jump!" would say, "How high?" Ironically, the job was in the offices of the multiple sclerosis society, where the majority of our clients scooted around in motorized wheelchairs.-- Rainn Wilson, actor That's a Fact Andy Borowitz I did a number of things in the '80s I'm not proud of. On more than one occasion I shouted out the phrase, "Everybody Wang Chung tonight." But there's one thing I did that was so heinous, I've never told anyone about it. In 1984 I wrote for the TV show The Facts of Life. I'm sure everyone remembers the cultural phenomenon that was The Facts of Life. But for those of you who somehow missed it, The Facts of Life was a coming-of-age saga about four teenage girls at an exclusive boarding school in Peekskill, New York. There was Blair, the sarcastic beautiful one; Natalie, the sarcastic chubby one; Jo, the sarcastic tomboy; and Tootie, the sarcastic sistah. Watching over all of them was their mentor, Edna Garrett, also known as Mrs. Garrett or, when the girls were in full Fonzie mode, Mrs. G. Oh, and here's one more piece of Facts of Life trivia: It was the worst television show ever produced. Now, given how monumentally it sucked, you may wonder, why did I agree to work on it? Well, quite simply, for the money. You see, I was the sarcastic whore on The Facts of Life. But you have to give me a break: I was just out of college, I was broke, I didn't have a car. I had to take the bus, which in L.A. is tantamount to eating out of a Dumpster. I remember my first day on the show, going in to pitch stories to the producers. These were two middle-aged women charged with the responsibility of making sure The Facts of Life did not lose its edge. And the show was at a critical point: It was moving from the safe confines of the boarding school to a whole new setting, a gourmet cheese shop cleverly named Edna's Edibles. It was a move fraught with risk. There was no margin for error. And that was the hornets' nest I was stepping into. As I sat down in the producers' office, I noticed that they each had coffee mugs with the Facts of Life logo on them. I was like, "Cool mugs, where'd you get them?" "Mrs. Garrett gave them to us," one of them explained. It turns out that Charlotte Rae, the actress who played Mrs. Garrett, liked to reward the writers by giving them Facts of Life logo mugs, and the better job you did, the more mugs you got. Now, you want to talk about an incentive! I started pitching my story, entitled "Gamma Gamma or Bust," in which Blair, the sarcastic beautiful one, pulls out all the stops to get into the Gamma Gamma sorority. The producers took it in, chewed it over, and then one of them finally spoke. "It's an interesting story, Andy," she said. "But what's the 'fact'?" "Say what?" I said. "The 'fact,' " she said. "Every Facts of Life story has a fact, a moral lesson, if you will, a deeper truth that the audience can take away with them." Suddenly the room started to spin. I realized: They don't know the show sucks. They think they're doing Moliere here. And I'm a comedian, I don't really do moral lessons, so I just started spinning my wheels...A stitch in time saves nine? Neither a borrower nor a lender be? Finally, with their help, we agreed that the fact of my story would be "Be yourself." I started to write the script and I thought toGurwitch, Annabelle is the author of 'Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized, And Dismissed', published 2006 under ISBN 9780743289856 and ISBN 0743289854.