Firefighter Richard Gawlik Jr. was terminated by Allentown, Pa., for abusing sick leave after he posted his daily golf scores on a public website during three days in which he had called off from work.
Allentown firefighters’ contract allows them up to four consecutive days’ sick leave without a doctor’s note, and given their shift schedule of four days on, four days off, a four-day, undocumented sick call effectively means a 12-day holiday — a pattern that describes 60 percent of all firefighter “sick” days, according to an analysis by the Allentown Morning Call.
Gawlik’s union president said the union would appeal and that “playing golf was well within the guidelines of Gawlik’s illness.”
Jury won’t
buy the
caffeine
excuse
Woody Will Smith, 33, was convicted of murdering his wife after a jury in Dayton, Ky., “deliberated” about 90 minutes before rejecting his defense of caffeine intoxication.
Smith had claimed that his daily intake of sodas, energy drinks and diet pills had made him temporarily insane when he strangled his two-timing wife with an extension cord in 2009, and made him again not responsible when he confessed the crime to police.
In May a judge in Pullman, Wash., ordered a hit-and-run driver to treatment instead of jail, based on the driver’s “caffeine psychosis.”
Some doctors believe the condition can kick in with as little as 400 mg of caffeine daily — an amount that, given America’s coffee consumption, potentially portends a sky-high murder rate.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa Fla. 33679 or go to www.newsoftheweird.com.)