That Damn Internet

Oh, some stories are just too precious for words! Like this one: Apparently a 62 year-old British guy by the name of Paul Marshallsea and his wife were working for a children's charity in Wales; had been for ten years. Back in January this man was on some sort of sick leave from the charity, claiming "work related stress" as the reason. The man and his wife took a stress-relieving vacation to...of all places...Australia. I mean, I'd love to see Australia as well, right, but it's halfway around the damn world from here! And it is from England too - even further!

So while Marshallsea was there "recuperating" and presumably reducing his stress level, he went to the beach. And wouldn't you know it, a shark was spotted very close to shore. A sick shark, probably, not really aggressive. Still, a shark is a shark (of course, of course).  It had to be a stressful situation for all beachgoers that day. Not for Big Paul the Charity Guy from Great Britain!

Marshallsea bravely strode into the water, grabbed the tigershark by the tail and pulled it away from shore, "guiding" it to deeper water. It apparently took the hint and didn't bother people on the beach anymore. Good sharky, run along now, off you go!

Well there happened to be a TV camera crew there, and they filmed the whole thing.




Needless to say, the video of man-fighting-shark went viral. And back in Blighty, the man's employer saw it. As you might imagine, he (and his wife) were fired. They learned of this when they returned home, hopefully rested and de-stressed. We can imagine the note that greeted him.

Welcome back! 

Hope you had a nice trip! 

Saw you on YouTube. 

You're fired.

In what must be the ultimate display of cheekiness, the man is quoted as telling the London Telegraph newspaper, "You think being in charge and running a children's charity, they would have patted me on the back and congratulated me. But to sack us both without any sort of discussion first is just disgusting."

People never cease to amaze me. Instead of being chagrined or even just embarassed at abusing his employer's sick-leave policy and getting caught, he became indignant and self-righteous.

On the other hand, what did the charity want him to do whilst on sick leave: stay at home in quiet contemplation listening to new age music and drinking a lot of tea?

I dunno... All I do know is that Mr. Marshallsea, if he actually was so stressed-out that he had to take sick leave should probably have chosen to go a nice quiet place - maybe a tropical isle in the Caribbean like St. John. Not on vacation to Australia.  I hope he didn't blow his retirement savings on that trip!  


Read the Yahoo News story HERE