Workplace Blunder
This happened a long long time ago; in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Many Americans believed, and still believe, that the terrorists infiltrated the USA from Canada. It wasn't true. But the Canadian authorities decided that immigrants should have modern identity cards instead of Landed Immigrant certificates. It took about a year to get the identity card system in place. I was working at the Edmonton Sun at the time. The day before all immigrants should have had their cards I was monitoring a television news bulletin at 6pm. One of the main stories involved a series of immigrants saying their had no idea about the identity cards or the deadline. They were all readers of the Sun's rival, the Edmonton Journal. When I reported the contents of the bulletin and the supposed identity card crisis to my boss, I made some crack along the lines "No surprise there, that's what they get for thinking The Journal's a real newspaper." That's when my boss, a little English guy, dropped his bombshell. He hadn't applied for his identity card yet and didn't know he had to. What does a person who wants to keep their job say to that? Not only was the guy directly affected by the need to have an identity card but he was also supposed to be in the news business.