Who here has been suspended?

It's happened to me twice.

Once early in my career I wrote a story that got a player suspended. At the game, a fan yelled out my name and threw a drink that hit me in the face. I saw the guy who did it and I threw the drink back at him while screaming obscenities at the top of my lungs.

That got me a week.

Several years later, an asshole ME cracked down on freelance and gave about seven of us a week off because we were freelancing without having the paper approve it ahead of time. This wasn't entirely true. Our SE had told us "just don't be stupid" when freelancing and for the most part let us do whatever we wanted. After someone on news side did something stupid, the rest of us were made examples of.

That got us a week.

Curious what other stories people are willing to share...

 

Good stuff.

I'm not proud of this, but I got into it with an AD over something I wrote. He called me a name, I called him one back, he called my boss and, presto, I got a week without pay.

To this day, I taunt him about "tattling on me."

 

I guess fighting and name-calling is taboo at some shops.

 

Yeah, I've punched a hole in a door and called my boss one of George Carlin's no-no words and never got suspended.

 

No suspension, just fired. Most egregious case when I wrote a preview, though it was edited down before it got into the paper.

 

Shortly after my slap on the wrist for freelancing, one of our slot guys called a female writer the c-word (not to her face, but to the entire office) and didn't even get a stern talking to.

 

Unfortunately, not at any place I've worked.

 

Was that the two girls one cup thing? I never clicked on that.

 

Not since high school.

 

Funny. I worked with a guy who once called a female ME that little word. At that point, I should have known what I was getting into.

 

At one of my previous stops, a married man in our sports department got suspended for a week for sexually harassing another male sportswriter.