Heather Levia And Losing Your Job At McDonald's

The media and blogosphere jumped on a story last week about Heather Levia, a 23-year old mother of twins who had been working at McDonald's for 8 years and is putting herself through nursing school, who allegedly lost her job after paying for the meals of two fire departments' worth of firemen who had spent the night fighting fire on a neighbouring building.

She had reportedly asked her manager if the restaurant was going to foot the bill for the first crew, and upon hearing they wouldn't, opted to pay for their breakfasts herself; hearing of ''free food'', a second unit came in and were offered the same treatment.

She was fired when she came in to work the next day. The company claims the reason why they fired her wasn't that she made the company look cheap - or anything to do with that situation.

Personally, my thoughts on the affair go like this: on one hand, she was insubordinate, and should have been reprimanded because this could potentially open up a huge can of worms where public servants of every level would start expecting the same treatment, first when working near there, then at all times; first firemen, then policemen, then ambulance drivers, then the whole Village People crew.

On the other hand, she did a good deed and should be congratulated. Especially on a shitty McDonald's wage.

But that's where it starts not making much sense: she's a mother of two, working at close to or spot-on minimum wage. She has time to go to school and raise her kids on the side. She's a nice person, in 2014, in North America.

She cannot possibly exist. As described, I mean. And in the PR-led world we live in, McDonald's would have put up a statue of her in its parking lot - or at least named her employee of the month - to cash in on her actions, not risk alienating the last few people who still eat there.

Could it be she knew she was going to get fired for whatever reason and attempted one grand gesture to keep it?

Who the fuck knows. One thing's for sure, though: in the age of Twitter and Facebook, even a low-level manager at McDonald's knows better than to bring this much bad publicity towards their employer. And journalists should wait until having both sides of a story before sensationalizing it to the max and having it spread worldwide. In some reports, she is even made the store's manager (though they still stick to the claim that she texted her boss, would that have been the regional director?); in another, she just ''donates food''; some just mention she paid for $83 worth of food (which is just one of the two orders).

Something is fishy with this story, but it would help if it started with actual facts.

Also, word is she was offered many jobs since. Good. If she had been a bad employee, she can now change with the good actions he's made; if she really is pure of heart, she deserved better than to work at that shitty job for so long. She's a hero now, it comes with both perks and responsibilities.

The New World Trade Center

At once a symbol of perseverance, resilience, grandeur, and perhaps something I'll call the American Spirit, to many of the 7-billion people in the world who are not Americans, this new version of World Trade Center Tower 1 (1 WTC) may seem more like a demonstration of arrogance.

Having been a guest on many occasions of the Marriott Hotel at the former 3 World Trade Center - including a six-month stint in the late 1998 and 1999 -  and understanding the way economics work (sure, it cost billions to make, but over time, the rent paid by the tenants will have reimbursed it, so the equation that some will do and come to the conclusion that ''that money could have saved starving people'' isn't factual), and considering they didn't go out of their way to make it the highest building in the world (it'll stand at #3 to start), I see it as a positive thing myself.

Gloating about it on the front page makes the tabloid New York Daily News look like pompous, self-important Imperialists, though. Of note for fellow Quebecers, the mast/pole on top was made in the Montréal area.

Today's Sign Of Our Civilization's Decadence

I'm not stupid; I know media organizations are way, way past ''trying to provide accurate, objective information'' as the Fourth Estate - the one designed to protect and inform the people about and from sources, mostly the government and the outside world.

But to actively demand the death of a person kind of crosses so many lines it makes me sick:

So far, the suspect is an alleged mass murderer. A trial will likely find him guilty, and the jury will probably think so even before the trial begins. These things happen. (They're wrong in theory, but with the prevalence of news sources and their choice of hiring commentators rather than journalists have led to this type of situation.)

But to ask for someone's death before even a single shred of evidence is put forth in what we, as a civilization, have agreed hundreds of years ago was the proper medium to do so is disgusting.

Not to mention that civilized countries no longer have the death penalty as an option, as the U.S. is the sole G-7 representative to have it, and the other countries where it is prevalent are China, Iran, North Korea, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Lybia, Syria, Bangladesh, Somalia, and Sudan. Countries the Western World sees as being governed by ruthless tyrants, some of which have been deposed, most of which are at war with their people.

The way I see it, if we're going to live in a world where we have the right to bear arms and an armed shooter kills a bunch of people in public, the only ones who are allowed to ''put him to sleep forever'' are people who were there and make that call. Anything beyond that is unacceptable.

If you're going to bitch about the State's right to tax your fucking ass, you'd better do everything you can to ensure it doesn't have the right to kill you; you'd just be asking for trouble...