Google Me

Oh, God… lol. So sorry, OP. On to bigger and better, I hope? What a nightmare. Though it could be worse, I guess — you didn’t sext her, did you?!

I’m curious about the “bad” business card–what it could have said and why you had them to begin with–and how the $4000 therapy sessions went.

Wishing you luck in stand-up, I’m sorry you lost your dream job…

Wrongful termination lawsuit much… unless you were sending the emails during company time, I suppose?
Also, I’d love to see this “bad” business card.

As this was a startlingly unfunny story I can only assume that you have already lost your career in stand-up, too.

Team Anon!

Never trust someone you meet for the first time to be SANE (ie. you giving her a ”bad” business card and a real business card where she knew your job info etc). And, next time you let off someone, don’t fall for a guilt-tripping game & try explaining yourself too much. It never leads anywhere.

Still. I don’t see how exchanging personal emails with her meant you losing your job. Did you get a chance to explain yourself to your boss? Or was it the ”bad” business card that was too much? I mean… a 4000$ therapy package?

I’m very sorry that you were the victim of a psycho, but let it be a lesson to you – don’t mix business with pleasure. Dates do not need to have your work information and vice versa. I had a similar experience where someone got mad at me and tried (unsuccessfully) to get me fired from my job.

Finally, a real VWD story.

I’m with Anon. Go back to star gazing, I’ve had root canals funnier than this story.

You are a terrible story teller – this was more painful to read than any ‘worst date’ I could imagine.

I’m so confused.

…how can someone tell that you googled them?

@Audax: I was thinking the same thing. This story left me confused and wondering why the OP didn’t seek legal action against his employer for wrongful termination and the date for harassment/stalking.

……”While eating, she signaled what she wanted by turning a bra-strap readjustment into extended public rubbing of her chest.” What kind of a signal is that? What did she want? Did she want you to feel her up while she was eating?

Like Sarah, I’m so confused, too.

The writing style made this very hard to follow, and you seem strangely fixated on the brastrap adjustment thing. If OP was sending those emails on company time, the termination seems plausible (albiet a little harsh), but otherwise, I feel there is more to this story…

Well, that certainly seems fake to me. Also, OP, were you on drugs when you wrote this tall tale? It’s very disjointed. And no, there’s no way to tell if someone has Googled you or not.

Meh, my husband works in physics and there’s no way anyone is getting fired from a job in astronomy because of something like that, just wouldn’t happen. You also have to fight for funding for basic travel money etc there is no way in hell anyone is paying for his therapy. Have to say this sounds fake, and was also very confusing to read.

I’m guessing she thought he didn’t Google her because there was something VERY OBVIOUS out there that he would have found, and presumably mentioned, if he had done so.

This was the only thing clear to me about this story.

You can tell if someone has Googled you if you have a website. It will show up in the site stats.

I’m so glad I’m not the only one confused here. The bra strap thing, the business card thing, the getting fired but getting therapy thing…you’ve got to be kidding me. I hope the OP pops by and straightens out this terrible writing.

I am pretty sure that this was actually just a plug from google for its search engine and email service. Nothing in this story makes a lick of sense. No one would get fired from an anonymous, unverified and unexplained email.

The University of Hawaii would not fire someone for this offense. Either this is fake, or the OP is not telling the real story.

http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2012/03/29/15376-haleakala-telescope-hearing-officer-fired/

Did the “bad” business card say something about Uranus?

@Dr. Cheese – The person fired in the article you reference worked for the State of Hawaii, not the telescope. Probably unrelated.

We don’t know what kind of job this person had, maybe they were just an intern which would make it much easier to fire them. But I do agree that there must be more details we’re not privy to.

In any case, the whole thing is too weirdly specific to be fake.

Was she groping herself at the lunch table? Is that was the “signalling” thing with her bra strap was? I’m so confused about what it is she was doing, and why it shows that she’s “healthy”.

Maybe she wanted you to check her for breast cancer?

Sounds to me like you got fired because you can’t write coherently and are prone to complete fabrications.

What a bunch of bologna. It’s been bad around here lately.

@ Jeff – the state of Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources works in cooperation with UH and both are state run institutions. I know people that actually work for both or have funds from both organizations. Either organization would not fire someone for the kind of offense that the OP stated (I have seen way worse), leading me to believe that he was probably fired for other reasons or that this is made up.

The main story here is about how I was expelled from the planet confirmation project that I started at LCOGT, which as a private observatory the Director can act on any whim without any restraint like is expected at any normal science organization. So the date story is just the start of another, bigger story about not being allowed to continue my participation in the science I started. I can see the confusion that people have when they thought I might have worked at the University of Hawaii, which in fact was very concerned about the violation of my civil rights by the Director of LCOGT.

It is a story of how a wealthy technology company executive had started his own new observatory with me as his first astronomer, but then comes up with such absurd false pretext that when I tell it right, can come out very funny. But when I don’t tell it right, it is painful because I have been so badly kept from doing the science that is my lifelong passion.
I believe that the best stories mix pain and humor, and so take great effort to tell well. Sometimes people laugh and laugh, other times people don’t know how to respond when something that is simply supposed to not happen, really did happen.

Though my efforts to get back into science is not primarily a story about a bad date,
I find humor that such a supposedly very smart man would use such arbitrary false pretext to block my participation in science. So I play up the kind of person he tried to portray himself as, claiming “We’re trying to help you” when he really was trying to get out of commitments, especially that he was probably paying me too much. He was responsible for misjudging an assignment by putting a person on the mountain to operate a robotic telescope. He wanted a way out of his commitment to support me with a high salary, a house, and a new car, and had he asked I would have willingly made any appropriate changes, but he found it easier to paint me as a sexual harasser when I was simply dating.

In response to other comments, no, I did not say or do anything by email (like sexting) that I need to cover up. I had been laughing at her for emailing me about not asking about her when she had this wardrobe malfunction going on. I think she wanted a relationship so bad that she started “showing off” with her hand under her blouse. She might say not, but that is not the important thing that whatever she was doing was distracting me from asking her about herself. I was being polite by looking away and just kept on talking about myself. So I see humor in how she was expecting me to look at her while she ran her hand across her chest in the restaurant. Since she was appearing to turn herself on, I had explained to her, “You’re just a healthy, horny, single female gone too long without a partner.” When I tell the story right, this line gets laughs. The boss should have laughed at it, too, but after he used it for false pretext, I started to do onstage story telling, I find that this line can get very good laughs.

It is a hard story to tell, and so often fails but often succeeds depending on the telling. I think the thing that most keeps me from telling it simply is to explain how this observatory was really just one rich man that could run a supposed science institution in such a random manner.

The story is not over, but has become the story of me seeking to return to astronomy by developing the theory of “planet destruction.” A big part of this story is how it has been wrong for the science community to expect me to endure unemployment until I develop something new without pressuring LCOGT to include me on my prior work. It has never been my choice to not continue to confirm new planets. I am right now preparing to again ask the NASA Kepler project to allow me to obtain participation and credit for doing the planet validations that our group has provided.

So it is complicated how this story winds its way to my “big story” of overcoming being expelled by false pretext from the astronomy research I was doing and am passionate about not leaving. I am hoping to return to employment soon with the submission of my paper using planet statistics to determine the rate of planets moving inwards and falling into the star. Even how I train myself to better tell this story has become a part of my story (I tell it in Hong Kong’s Take Out Comedy, which you can see here: http://youtu.be/9vCAJt2v2jk). I believe that in defying how I was thrown out of astronomy that there is an important story to tell.

@Dr. Cheese – I’m not disagreeing with you, who knows what other things this guy may have done such that all it took was one more incident for him to get sacked. But this just doesn’t read like a fake story. A fake would be much more clearly written and would be trying harder to sound plausible.

really weird writing style. all i got was he went out on the date, preferred someone else, she got mad and sent him a nasty email, then his boss saw the email and was so mad that he fired him. so he’s complaining that she was the cause of his firing because his boss is crazy. ookay

@Jeff – a fake story would be more clearly written if it were written by someone who could write well. Even bad writers can attempt a fake.

I’m with Natalie – the easy way to know if someone googled you is their reaction to something you tell them. (Or the questions they ask you, but apparently the OP didn’t ask enough questions on this date, so I’ll assume the other.) If a guy is surprised when you mention you make pinatas, and the top results in an online search of your name are stories about your pinatas, the dude obviously didn’t look.

And I agree with everyone – nobody gets fired for inappropriate behavior on a private date outside of the workplace. And $4000 of “free” therapy as a severance package? Nope. Not buying it.

So much is incomprehensible in this story, so I won’t bother.

But really, if this were to be at all entertaining or humorous, he should have told us what the “funny” business card said. (Copying his parentheses, although we all know if you use quotations around something it’s not really that thing at all. A “scary” monster is not scary. A “funny” business card probably isn’t funny.)

Sounds like “review”‘s writing to me–the infamous commenting troll. He/she always seems to think that he/she is much funnier than I do.

She had complained that I had not Googled her because if I had, I would have known more about her. The story as written in 2010 was not so clear, I will agree, but some commenters are also going in their own directions. I think it funny that someone would be after their date’s interest so bad that she would complain that he had not Googled her before the date.

The “funny” business card had been made by my coworker, and only said my name, followed by, “Staff Astronomer, Thrill Seeker, and All Around Good Guy.” When my coworker handed two boxes of business cards to me, I didn’t pay the 2nd one much attention though I likely thought it was charming. But after handing it to the date, I thought that perhaps I should have be more cautious, and asked her for it back, but she resisted, so I gave her the standard one and asked her not to show the more entertaining one to anyone.

It is part of how the story progressed that after the termination, I didn’t see these as obvious false pretenses as I do now. Nor did the people I went to asking for advice. When a boss has your private email, you feel as if you did something wrong at work, even if it your private life.
It was at my boss’s suggestion that I consulted with an attorney, and even she took seriously the false pretense of sexual harassment. When someone who has that much power over you does something like this, it is hard to take an objective viewpoint. That is why I did not write it so well in 2010.

Just a general “WTF?” from me. The boss fired him why? Because someone sent the boss an email about a date, that had zero to do with the job?

This entire thing is bizarre.

Almost a fifth of it is going on about the bra-strap rubbing thing, which otherwise seems to have nothing to do with the story. The sudden job termination also makes no sense. It seems likely that they are connected, but that the person who wrote this doesn’t want to admit it. Maybe he spent company time sending emails more inappropriate than he implies in his story?

Why on a first date would you ever, ever give anyone a ‘funny’ business card (?) and a work one so they have easy blackmail material? Especially to a woman you already thought was a bit off? Okay, maybe just an oversight. Hope he learned his lesson.

Why would you have a long back-and-forth email conversation with someone you were trying to cease contact with? This isn’t an oversight. This is something that took a long time, not a spur-of-the-moment human mistake. It really makes it clear that there is a lot more going on in this story; the guy was sending emails that were most likely inappropriate and somehow linked it to his workplace beyond the mere fact that he worked there (making it legal to fire him and all). Again, considering how clearly this story is leaving vital details out (that the guy is obviously uneasy/ashamed of) it seems most probable that he sent several emails while at work with a lot of inappropriate stuff, trying to let the strange woman down.

Whatever it was, it seemed worthy of $4000 therapy, so it’s pretty clear that he said some weird and nasty stuff. Not just the meager “I was distracted by your hands.”

What’s wrong with just a “I don’t think it’s going to work out, I’m not feeling a connection, sorry and best wishes”? Why the lengthy email exchange? What the hell did he say to her that lost him his job??

I would have enjoyed this far more if it weren’t a badly doctored version trying to make him look innocent, so we actually knew what specifically happened.

After reading the OP’s two looong comments here, well, I believe it happened, but unfortunately I also believe that the OP is not a very good writer, sorry. Even the comments are hard to follow.. I suspect the whole thing comes down to about two paragraphs, one about the date and one about the director firing him, yet it’s like 20-25 paragraphs now here.

I read more and more stuff from OP and understand less and less. I also find that I care less and less because none of it makes sense and it’s annoying to read

OP is an astronomer. He has slightly weak social skills. Thus, he was trapped by a crazy. What’s so hard to understand?

I think some commenters are succumbing to the “Just world fallacy”: people want to believe we live in a just world, so when they learn about an injustice, they often make excuses why the person “deserved it.”

There was a study where people heard a story about a boy who was attacked and beaten by strangers. The group who were told the attackers were caught and punished were more sympathetic to the boy than the group who were told the attackers were never caught! The injustice of the latter situation inspired these people to make up excuses why the boy had “deserved it” (by going out in public alone, etc.).

Poor guy just wants to be an astronomer. LET HIM DO SCIENCE!

I’m beginning to suspect this all only happened in the OP’s head. His writing style in the story and comments have lot of similarities to my brother’s, who has severe schizoid bipolar disorder.

There’s a chance parts are real, but if this is how well he writes he didn’t get fired for that e-mail. He got fired for crazy.

Someone please give this man a telescope and definitely not a microphone.

When you write a whole other story to explain what we missed in the first one…you should probably just accept that the first one wasn’t all that good.

YOU GUYS, DID YOU WATCH THE YOUTUBE!!!!!???? It explains absolutely everything that you need to know. Amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Aspergers sucks, you guys.

Actually cracked up at Monica’s comment.

I think we should give this guy a nickname: Sheldon.

It’s like listening to someone with great academic intelligence, and zero social intelligence. I’m impressed you feel capable to be a stand-up comedian.

lady quackworthy is a LIE.

monica- HAAAAAAAAA!

I am actually pissed off that I watched that video. Seriously the worst comedy show…ever. Watching venus would have been more entertaining than that.

“Since she was appearing to turn herself on, I had explained to her, “You’re just a healthy, horny, single female gone too long without a partner.” When I tell the story right, this line gets laughs. The boss should have laughed at it, too, but after he used it for false pretext, I started to do onstage story telling, I find that this line can get very good laughs.”
Huh?

Umm, seriously, I think this OP is mentally ill (though I know other commenters will jump on me for not knowing what I’m talking about). The rambling, repetitive writing reminds me of troubled writings I’ve seen from other ill people.

There’s more to this story than the narritive shares.

I’m an astronomer. I don’t have weak social skills or Aspgerger’s and honestly, I haven’t met anyone in this business who does (they might exist, but they probably aren’t the type to chat up a lot of people at conferences). The stereotype about scientists having poor social skills is pretty inaccurate.
I also happen to know that this is a tough business (especially lately) and a lot of people are being forced to “endure unemployment” or seek non-astronomy jobs. We’re not talking people who have taken two years off and have a spotty (or nonexistent?) publication record either. I know of someone with an h index of 33 who is leaving astronomy because he can’t find a new post. I also know that whining about why you don’t have a job isn’t going to help you get a new one. If you want a new job, you have to hunt for it and hope that the fact that your last employer obviously won’t be writing you a reference letter won’t look too bad (or that you’re such an attractive candidate otherwise that this doesn’t matter). Nobody is going to cut you any slack because your boss at your last position sucked.

Oh, but tough break. Part of staying in science is being in the right place at the right time (or picking the right job at the right time) and the rest is working your ass off. If you work your ass off but happen to hit a spot of bad luck, then that really does suck, but you’re far from the only one in this boat.