HOW I GOT FIRED FROM AMERICAN APPAREL BERLIN AND BECAME THE KING OF THE UNIVERSE

How To Lose Friends and Alienate Ex-Employers

By Dacen McAmmond

Backstory:

Shortly after Dacen arrived back at our flat after work yesterday, he received a phone call that made him shout at a volume I've never heard from him before. It was his good friend Olga, who'd just come from a meeting at their joint workplace, the American Apparel store in West Berlin, telling him that they'd been jointly fired, for the least convincing reasons. Dacen received a short and succinct email shortly after, and he seemed pretty angry that he'd been criticised before his sacking, when clearly the arrival of new superiors was the reason that he and Olga had been singled out for the chop. I interrupted him while he tried to compose a reply; and gladly stepped up to the plate when he asked for help with his composition.

This is the result.

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Hello Dacen,

I tried to reach you by phone but it appears that your number is not
in service. This email is to confirm that you are no longer employed
with American Apparel. Due to a lack of communication and your limited
availability, I have decided to terminate your employment.

I'm sorry this couldnt work out. I wish you the best of luck in the
future.

With warm regards,

Anahit Pogosian

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Anahit,

I'm grateful for your earnest and direct email, and I read it with no small amount of interest. I have been communicating extensively with Olga before and since the abrupt termination of our contracts, and so I would regard this situation with a generous helping of irony if a 'lack of communication' was indeed the reason for our departure.

I can vouch for myself and Olga in saying that our diligence, creative ability and work ethic was never addressed by AA in either praise or compensation and that to receive such a curt missive from yourself was, sadly, no surprise to either of us. To be removed from a situation so under-nourishing by means so impersonal is not a surprise either.

I would like to state that I have learnt much from my time working at American Apparel; I have learnt that often, superiority in the work hierarchy is not matched by superiority in intellect. I only hope that your future employees are blessed with an inherent naivete that allows them to withstand high doses of bureaucratic over-lording and restrictive working hours.

I am aware that you will have filled my position within bare minutes of my departure, and I do hope that I will be missed.

I look forward to getting my weekends and evenings back, so that I may concentrate on my alcoholism with more intent.

Tschüs!!!


Dacen McAmmond
Future King of Berlin and the Universe