Is today your first day back after the holidays? Perhaps you were not looking forward to it - but then some people had a worse time at work in 2008; DOUGLAS MCARTHUR From Friday's Globe and Mail January 2, 2009 at 8:55 AM EST Layoffs and hiring freezes may be the order of the day as economic woes clobber the workplace. But why waste your time worrying about it? Just hold your head up high, whistle a little tune and have a snigger at those with bigger career headaches than you. Here are some of 2008's zaniest examples of wonkiness in the workplace: Firing offences A senior London police officer was fired for having sex at the Gatwick Airport railway station while on duty and in uniform. He said he left his earpiece in so he could be contacted in an emergency. A museum curator in China was dismissed for gluing a 2,000-year-old turtle dove carving back together instead of reporting the damage. A South Korean financial researcher lost his job for telling a TV talk show that people make unwise investments because they are too greedy. A Florida police officer was let go for routinely butting in line at a Starbucks, demanding free coffee and threatening slow emergency response times if employees refused. A Chinese official was sacked from his Communist Party post for staging a lavish funeral for his mother. Local residents complained that he erected a stage, hired a band and hosted a banquet with more than 100 tables. A pilot for Turkey's AnadoluJet was terminated for allowing a 15-year-old to sit in his seat during a flight while he went to the bathroom. Swedish clergyman Gunnar Svensson was asked to resign after crashing his church's computer system with a virus downloaded as he surfed a hardcore porn website. Inappropriate behaviour A Chicago public school teacher was pulled from the classroom after she taped a nine-year-old special education student to his chair because he wouldn't sit down. A senior British civil servant was fined for leaving secret intelligence files relating to Iraq and al-Qaeda on a train. A German policewoman forgot her gun in a courthouse washroom during a high-security murder trial involving rival biker gangs. A German law professor was jailed for raising students' marks in exchange for sex and money. A Romanian school teacher was suspended for allegedly shooting a misbehaving student in the hand with a rubber bullet during class. A German woman, working as a teacher in Hungary, stripped to her underwear as part of a game while supervising a class party. An Israeli soldier was jailed for three weeks for yawning without covering his mouth while his base commander was speaking at a memorial event. A teenage Polish firefighter set a series of barn fires in hopes of earning enough overtime to buy his girlfriend a birthday present. A Scottish postman working in Germany hoarded at least 20,000 letters at his home because he felt he was "overtaxed" and couldn't catch up....
