Slander against me and my unemployment

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yes slander is wrong only if it is truly slander. unsubstantiated negative publicity is certainly able to be addressed by litigation (which is arduous to the extreme) , and so general suppression of medial identification of mediocrity is widespread. therefore the mushrooms are all on the rise.

no this thread is not where i want to be either so ....end of post.....

In the similar situation I had, they began by saying something like, "So ... we are here today to be sure you understand your job description."


That certainly appears to be what happened here.

One thing of which to be aware--in the retail or restaurant sector, if a customer complains about you, whether rightly or wrongly (and, we operate under the assumption that "The Customer is Always Right"), then your job is over, and there is nothing that you can do about it.

There are plenty of other people whom you employer can hire.

It has been 4 years, and you don't really know what happened. I would suggest writing this off as a life's experience, and moving on.

It certainly felt like I wasn't fairly dealt with, but the attitude of the managers seemed to indicate that they had been deluded enough to think otherwise. Cool stuff. Be careful though, a random customer might mistake the phone for a phaser.

On a failblog site I recently came across this:

I'd understand that kind of arsenal here...but in Seattle? Are you afraid someone's going to assault you with a scalding hot cup of coffee?

That was a reasonable response....never know, it could have been

Many years ago, I had made a 12-guage "zip gun" ... and then my dad told me to get rid of it and not leave it behind with any of my younger brothers when I went into the Navy. I first thought about just tossing it off a bridge somewhere, but then I decided to "have some fun" and go "turn it in" at the police station. So, I stuck it up my sleeve and approached the desk. After the officer at the desk has asked what he could do for me, I "slipped the zip" out of my sleeve and showed it to him while saying, "I need to talk to someone about getting rid of an illegal weapon."

Whew. I have no idea where all those other cops came from within the next few seconds, but I was surrounded and could not move!

My zip gun ended up in their display of confiscated weapons and I headed off to boot camp.

Last edited by leejosepho on 21 Apr 2011, 10:30 am, edited 2 times in total.

I remember watching the news about riots in Seattle back in the '90s, so I think it may not necessarily be the safest place on Earth.

Bunch of hippies and a few anarchists. You're safe so long as you're not a Starbucks window.

Ah, so perhaps the windows of Starbucks ought to be constructed to be like the window that Malcolm Reynolds was thrown out of in the second episode of Firefly.

It'd be hilarious to see an anarchist get hit in the face with his own brick ricocheting off the glass.

That's happened before, since one shop owner had decided to install 2" thick plexiglass I think it was. The dude threw a cinderblock at the window and it bounced off right back upon him.

Well, not knowing the specific state laws of where you live, I can tell you this much based on my experience with being slandered.


1. The general statute of limitations on slander/defamation is 12 months.

2. Any EEOC claim generally must be filed within 180 days of when the most recent event happened.

3. While you can pursue a case pro se, the simple fact is that is it SO EASY for a slanderer to evade liability because of what YOU must PROVE to get a judgment in your favor.

3a. Even if you can prove it all happened, "truth" and "opinion" are absolute protections from charges of defamation, and courts are eager to not create a "slippery slope" by saying something is actionable when it might be seen as protected speech.

4 years have passed. There likely is no legal recourse for you at this point UNLESS Wal-Mart communicates that you were terminated for a "violent act" (which they can't prove) and it costs you an opportunity. Of course, you have to prove a potential employer was told anything to build a case, but it would restart the 12-month clock from the most recent communication from Wal-Mart.

I doubt you filed a UI claim since you were working two jobs at the time. You can take some comfort that a litigation-adverse institution like Wal-Mart is likely doing nothing but confirming dates of employment. Many places don't even address the issue of if you'd be eligible for rehire since it implies something that they might get in trouble for (they might not want you back, but not for any reason that would make you unfit for another employer).

You are correct that it appears they had made up their mind before they even spoke with you.

I worked the late shift as a delivery driver, which meant I was driving a marked car and carrying cash to people past 2am, and my delivery range did actually include some sketchy areas (for the Seattleites in the room, Aurora ave around 85th, lower Lake City Way, Harborview Medical Center, etc). Even the area that my store was based in, the University District, could get nasty when all the frat boys had been drinking and thought it might be fun to get together and harass people, though the real danger there was that an actual criminal element used to come in from the south end and rob the frat boys since they were such easy prey. It got to be a real problem in the area, despite a fairly heavy police presence and daily security alerts from the UW people were even getting mugged on campus. All that aside though, carrying a gun is such a minor inconvenience that I'd do it regardless of where I worked, that .380 in the picture is smaller than a wallet and goes into my back pocket with no other concealment necessary.

The picture isn't a typical night's load out, but a collection of things I had carried at one point or another over the years I did the job, though the two guns (or some other two guns) and the Ti-Lite folding knife were always on me. The combined weight was only about 4-5 lbs, and everything is small enough to hide under an untucked shirt. I make no secret out of being a weapons geek, so I tended to play around with carrying different toys I acquired just to see how they handled and if I thought they might be useful. The back of the store was often my practice area on slow nights when the boss wasn't there, so I'd throw all sorts of weird stuff in my trunk to play with on shift. It could be pretty fun, one of our cooks took Kendo so he'd bring his Shinai and I'd bring my rattan Kali sticks and we'd spar when it was dead, good times.

Not trying to derail your thread here 'Keet, your getting fired for allegedly talking about weapons just reminds me of my driving days and the *very* different work environment there.

Sorry, that's my fault. I should have made it more clear that I was joking around. Marked traveling money late at night is always dangerous. Just recently here, a pizza driver was blinded with a cup of bleach and robbed by someone....and all they took was the pizza.

Nah, that's okay, I would rather this thread be shifted more towards a generalized discussion about wrongful termination and how people are paranoid about the object of weapons, and even there very mention, but don't give a thought about context. IDK. Thanks to the previous posters regarding the legal advice, but for any path that I might take to settle things through the courts, even if it were possible, would be probably too much of a hassle. Right now I'm rather just stressed out about having lost some friends on facebook after arguing with a friend there. It's like, why don't some people have more of a spine? I just like to argue, but if people really want to take that personally it's their IQ in question.