Are you lazy as hell? Do you absolutely hate to work and want to get paid for doing almost nothing? As a fringe benefit, you will also score big bucks on your way out the door after months as a parasitic do nothing to the tune of perhaps $40,000. If this sounds like the opportunity for you, a no-work job is waiting for you at Politico.
Erik Wemple of the Washington Post reported on just such an example. The favorite part of the story for your humble correspondent was his link titled criticism that he was "lethargic." However, before we get to that, Wemple describes a Politico settlement for an undisclosed amount that couldn't possibly be $40,000. Could it?
Mike Elk, the Politico labor reporter who importuned his co-workers to unionize, has reached a settlement agreement with the Rosslyn-based outlet following his August departure, he told the Erik Wemple Blog today. “I’m very happy” with the terms of the settlement, said Elk, who declined to specify details.
Robert Paul, an attorney with law firm Zwerdling, Paul, Kahn & Wolly, P.C. confirmed that a settlement had been reached but declined further comment.
The reason we can't find out if the settlement amount was $40,000 is there was probably a non-disclosure agreement in the settlement. Therefore no one other than the parties involved could possibly find out if that amount was $40,000. Since we can never find out if the settlement amount was $40,000, let us hear Wemple describe his Dickensenian work conditions as relayed by Wemple:
Though Elk wouldn’t open up about his settlement, he did detail the circumstances around his departure, which, he says, stemmed from PTSD. The condition, he has told the Erik Wemple Blog, came from having been too close to harrowing labor disputes. “I just have all these flashbacks about guys that wound up dying in the middle of stories I was covering,” Elk told the Erik Wemple Blog in an extensive Sept. 10 interview. In a first-person piece published at the Huffington Post, Elk wrote: “These last few years, I have gotten so much help in my struggle with PTSD from so many once-strangers that I cry when I think about it. It’s really proven to me that when you got a friend in labor, you got a friend everywhere. When you are in the labor movement, no matter how scary this world can get, you never walk alone.”
Wasn't PTSD originally called "shell shock?" So what were the horrible conditions at Elk's workplace battlefield besides imaginary death flashbacks that caused such extreme "shell shock" as to disable him? Humming air conditioners? Ice cube machine in the fridge making plopping sounds into the tray?
Because of this condition, Elk said, “I couldn’t take the speed of the reporting and asked for an assignment not as strenuous in terms of speed.” Politico determined that he couldn’t perform the rudiments of his job as reporter for Politico Pro’s labor category. “You’re too disabled for the job,” the outlet said, according to Elk. “At that point, I chose to resign,” he says.
Yeah, Elk wrote a grand total of 5 stories from October 2014 to the end of January this year. The strenuous pace was killing him. Oh, and isn't "I chose to resign" just a polite way of saying "I was FIRED!"
Now we come to my favorite part of Wemple's story:
In the September interview, Elk expressed support for Politico’s stated commitment to “union neutrality” but said that he was “just trying to work out a disability settlement. There were some issues — I got overworked a little bit there.” Pressed on criticism that he was “lethargic” and didn’t rack up many bylines, Elk responded, “I wrote 12 stories they didn’t publish.”
Click that link. I repeat. Click that link. And when you do, ponder the grand total of 18 stories in almost a year that Elk claimed to have written.
Elk professed that it was “really thrilling to be down there” after “playing all my career in the minor leagues.” Asked in September what, specifically, he was seeking in the negotiations, Elk riffed, “I’m saying, ‘Hey, obviously I wasn’t the right guy for the job, you did some things that sort of made the conditions worse: Here’s the remedy — pay for me to go back to [graduate] school to get a new job.’ . . . That’s what I’m asking, is grad school.”
And because Elk is supposedly keeping mum on his "grad school" payout, we can never find out how much the Politico settlement was. ...Although an unnamed source in Elk's neighborhood has claimed that he has been loudly bragging to anyone within earshot that he suckered Politico out of $40,000 (in addition to his salary) for doing nothing while there. Of course, even someone as lethargic as Mike Elk couldn't possibly be so lazy as to let down his guard and risk violating a possible non-disclosure agreement.
Nope, even Elk couldn't possibly be so foolish as to publicly boast about a $40,000 Politico settlement. How much? Forty grand. What? FORTY THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!
