29 years ago today, I started my journalism career ... and it almost ended right then because a lying co-worker accused me of being a gambling addict and a thief

Or: A what-could-have-been story I don't like to think about

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I started my career as a journalist 29 years ago today, and my career almost ended before the summer was over.

Roger Hart, now a longtime friend, gave me that first job (as an entry level reporter at The Daily Telegram in Adrian, Mich.) and four years later, he gave me my third (to return to the Telegram as news editor).

I’m grateful for both.

But I’m far more grateful for the time he didn’t fire me even though he was ordered to.

Before I get to that, let me talk about that first day. I graduated from Central Michigan University on Saturday and moved into my dingy apartment behind a shoe repair shop on Monday. I covered a city council meeting that night in Tecumseh, Michigan, a small town an hour and a half southwest of Clawson, the Detroit suburb I grew up in.

I had not heard of Tecumseh before I took the job. The mayor asked me to introduce myself. I stood up and said “I’m Matt Crossman, and I’ve been a resident of Tecumseh for …” and here I dramatically looked at my watch, “three hours.”

After the meeting, I rushed back to my bureau office to write the story. It took me 3.5 hours. By the time I finished covering local politics four years later, if it took me 3.5 hours to write a city council meeting story, it was because I took a three-hour nap.

This was long before our newsroom had Macs, long before we had email, and long before I knew how to work a modem, well scratch that last one, as I never learned: I couldn’t get the story to send.

The first story of my career, and I couldn’t even turn it in!

The newspaper was a PM daily, so the story wasn’t due until early the next morning. I went home, tried to sleep, and rushed back to my office first thing. The modem still didn’t work. Like a prehistoric caveman, I wrote the story out longhand on a legal pad, jumped in the car and drove like a maniac to the main office. In the 20-minute drive, I broke who knows how many traffic laws. I passed a school bus, which I’ve never told anybody until now.

I typed in the story, met all my co-workers, basked in this exciting new life. I could have freebased the smell of that ink. And the day got better. That afternoon – my first full day – there was a major house fire in my coverage area. (Only dangerously ambitious journalists describe that as making a day better.)

I lived across the street from the fire department, so I walked over to interview the chief. He said, “I’m headed over there right now, do you want to go with me?”

For a completely green (and dangerously ambitious) reporter, that was a dream question. Of course I did!

We arrived at the house and went in the back door. It’s been three decades, but I can still smell the smoke. I can still see the chief pointing to a door that was closed, as it was during the fire. When he opened it, the room behind it was barely damaged. That room, and its contents, would be saved with a little work. Then he pointed to a door that was open, as it was during the fire, and the room it led to was a crispy mess. That room was a total loss.

He told me that whether the door was open or closed made all the difference.

Doors open.

Doors close.

Sometimes we go through open ones.

Sometimes we bang into closed ones.

The story ran across the top of the front page the next day. The photo that went with it was absolutely incredible (IIRC, it had a firefighter holding an ax on the roof with flames in the frame). It was taken by Roger Hart, who in addition to being a great editor is also a world-class photographer, and now I’m getting to the point of this story.

It sounds like my job started off awesome. And other than the fact it took me so long to tie my ties that I eventually stopped unknotting them, it did. But it turned house-burning-to-the-ground ugly.

That summer, I was painfully bored and lonely. I invited guys from the office over to play poker in my dingy apartment behind a shoe repair shop. We only did it a couple of times, and we played for nickels, dimes and quarters.

Around that time, a bunch of money turned up missing from the bureau office—newspaper delivery people dropped off money with an office manager there. Soon thereafter, all of the money, plus exactly $100, showed back up.

I did not know this at the time, but the office manager told investigators that I did it because I had a gambling problem.

I had not even made it to the end of my probationary period, and already a co-worker had accused me of stealing from the newspaper.

The publisher told Roger to fire me.

I did not know that either.

Roger refused. He knew I didn’t have a gambling problem (he was there for those poker nights!), and he knew I had been happy with how much the paper was paying me ($17,500 a year, don’t laugh that was actually decent for a reporter with no experience in 1994.)

A few months later, a boss asked if I knew anybody in St. Clair, Michigan. I said one of my college roommates is from there, but he doesn’t live there anymore, why? He said there had been a ton of phone calls from the bureau office to a number there, and the office manager said it was you.

Someone called that number. It was the office manager’s cousin.

She was fired.

The weird thing is she had been exceedingly kind to me. She made me feel welcomed and cared for and her graciousness made my transition from college to the real world go smoothly.

After I learned the details above, I remembered she had told me a couple of rather obvious (and seemingly pointless) lies that I chose to ignore/give her the benefit of the doubt because she was so nice to me.

For example, after she told me she had been a star softball player in high school, I invited her to play on the company team. I'll never understand why she showed up, but she did, and it appeared she had never played softball in her life.

I concluded she was a sad combination of lost and lonely and a pathological liar and I was unlucky enough to be among her victims. But I was lucky enough to have Roger protecting me.

When I think about what would have happened to me if Roger had fired me … I honestly can’t think much beyond how shocked and terrified I would have been. My life would have been a charred mess, like the room with the door open.

Instead, I was like the room where the door remained closed. I was temporarily damaged — angry at her, confused that the publisher would have ordered my firing with no evidence to justify it, while also grateful to Roger … and as the years go by, I realize, not nearly grateful enough.

Doors open.

Doors close.

I was fortunate enough to have someone who cared about me enough to direct me through the right door.

If you have a crazy work story, share it in the comments. And tell Roger I said thanks.