Jan 20 2007 - AP
An administrative judge has denied unemployment benefits to a woman who was fired from her job for keeping a journal detailing her efforts to avoid work.
Emmalee Bauer, 25, of Elkhart, was employed by the Sheraton hotel company as a sales coordinator in Des Moines. While on the job, she kept a handwritten journal. A supervisor told her to stop writing on company time, but instead, Bauer wrote her journal, all 300 single-spaced pages, on her work computer.
In the journal, portions of which were introduced during a recent hearing regarding Bauer's request for unemployment, Bauer describes her efforts to avoid work.
"This typing thing seems to be doing the trick," she wrote. "It just looks like I am hard at work on something very important."
Bauer also wrote: "I am only here for the money and, lately, for the printer access. I haven't really accomplished anything in a long while ... and I am still getting paid more than I ever have at a job before, with less to do than I have ever had before. It's actually quite nice when I think of it that way. I can shop online, play games and read message boards and still get paid for it."
In her journal she speculated it could someday be published.
Bauer was fired for misuse of company time after a supervisor discovered the journal late last year.
Administrative Law Judge Susan Ackerman denied Bauer's request for unemployment last week, saying (that) the journal demonstrated a refusal to work, as well as Bauer's "amusement at getting away with it."
Mankind has created spectacular works of art, engineered incredibly tall buildings, designed impressive supercomputers, lived in outerspace, discovered cures for nasty diseases. As a whole, nothing can compare to human intelligence, but sometimes, humans try anything to get out of working.
Iowa woman fired for journaling at work