« Bulls gore Stiles on Christmas Eve | Main | Lunch lady loses her meal ticket »
Lusty novelist paged for writing on the job
Posted by Fired Fred on December 26, 2007 4:47 PM
Unfortunately for Tanja Shelton, her job didn't include writing bodice rippers. She was supposed to be doing whatever it is a production control scheduler for an industrial machine maker does.
Typing, lots and lots of typing, made Typing Tanja's boss suspicious.
No sharply chiseled hero came to Typing Tanja's rescue. She got fired for her romantic ruminating...
After the writings were discovered, the company fired Shelton and challenged her claim for unemployment benefits. That led to a state hearing, at which Shelton testified that her writing was a way of honing her job skills during slow periods at work.Now she's got plenty of time to finish just what the world needs, another romance novel. As the reporter said, "Unbridled lust! Unspoken passion! Unemployment!"
"I was writing, but it wasn't necessarily a book," she testified. "I was just typing my thoughts down, trying to keep my brain moving. I wanted to improve my typing skills."
She said she didn't consider her fiction writing a violation of the company policy that prohibits personal use of the computer.