Kollios, who works at the Trinity Grill in New Port Richey, said her boss approached her in front of a customer with one of the oddest requests she's ever heard.
"I had a customer at the bar and the owner came up to me and said, 'Please stop laughing,' Kollios said. "We giggled -- the guy at the bar and myself. And then I said, 'Are you serious?' And he said, 'Yes, if you laugh again, you will have to go home."
Kollios said she was then fired on the spot.
Kollios said she was shocked by her employer's actions.
"I will say that I don't have an odd laugh," Kollios said. "I did ask a few people but it's not."
The restaurant owner said a customer did not complain about the laughing. However, he prefers the restaurant to be quiet and cozy and Kollios' laugh prevented that from happening.
Under Florida law, employees are considered "at will," which means they may be terminated for any reason as long as they're not under contract and it doesn't involve age, sex or race discrimination.
If you don't know why you should get up early, then there's no reason for you to get up early. Write it down and keep it by the bed. When the alarm goes off, read what you wrote. And make it a good reason, like getting a making a healthy breakfast or spending a few extra minutes with your kids.
2. Get enough sleep.
If you are having a lot of difficulty getting up, it may because you're not getting enough sleep. Stop staying up (tape your favorite shows!); don't do work until just before you go to bed; go to bed on schedule.
3. Jump out of bed.
When the alarm goes off, DON'T hit the snooze button! Nope. Not even once. Hop up out of bed and start your day. No excuses. You'll actually get used to this if you do it regularly.
4. Consistency!
Go to bed at the same time. Get up at the same time. Don't constantly change things up.
It's wise to remember how easily email -- this wonderful technology -- can be misused, sometimes unintentionally, with serious consequences.
Consider the case of the Illinois man who left the snow-filled streets of Chicago for a vacation in Florida. His wife was on a business trip and was planning to meet him there the next day. When he reached his hotel, he decided to send his wife a quick email.
Unfortunately, when typing her address, he missed one letter, and his note was directed instead to an elderly preacher's wife whose husband had passed away only the day before. When the grieving widow checked her email, she took one look at the monitor, let out a piercing scream, and fell to the floor in a dead faint.
At the sound, her family rushed into the room and saw this note on the screen:
Dearest Wife, Just got checked in. Everything prepared for your arrival tomorrow.
This is way too long for you to watch at work (unless you check it out over your a couple lunch breaks!) but I felt it was important to share.
Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch (Oct. 23, 1960 - July 25, 2008) gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving presentation, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals.
Hope you can check back every work day for a little pick-me-up before your 9-5 grind starts. These posts are funny, irreverent, irrelevant and weird ... but they should all be relatively safe for work. Good, (mostly) clean, innocent fun. Enjoy!
