Work

OP here, when the second classmate made his announcement, everyone went silent (I swear crickets were chirping). He went into a ramble that sounded oddly like "the statue we got it in 1962." It took us all a few minutes to stifle our laughter to correct him. After that, yes someone did inform the first guy he was indeed wrong and told him several reasons why. At least it was a good way to kick off a what was slowly becoming a boring day. And yes I focused on the second guy a little bit more because I myself suck at history so I couldn't judge the first classmate too much. Especially when my previous schools skimmed over a lot of American history. If it wasn't for the books my mom showed me that she had on American history I wouldn't know much other than the basics. The education system I'm in really sucks.

to everyone ranting about the phone: its called bluetooth. to everyone not understanding how laptop got on roof: i was carrying a bunch of stuff and set laptop on the roof to open car door. i had just been reamed out by my office manager and head partners in a humiliating way and was distraught. i set it down the right way (on its rubber feet) so make a mental note for the next part. to everyone claiming the laptop could not / should not have made it to the freeway, and / or flown off: i work close to the freeway, and was amazed myself. I later re-drove the route and found the laptop on the side of teh freeway about 2 miles from where i had originally gotten on. from the damage to it, it looked like it must have caught the wind when i got up to speed and then slid down off to the side of the freeway.

Hey guys! OP here. Here's a follow up and a clarification. It was a single sheet of glass, about four feet long, and it fell as we were moving things around, breaking when it hit the floor. The glass shelves cost the store $200-$400 each, and we're always being reminded to be careful because they are so expensive. I was being careful, but the heavy shelf slipped in through my hands and the corner of the shelf hit the floor just right that it shattered. My boss is kind of a jerk, with a weird sense of humor. My coworker was teasing me, and my boss thought it would be funny to play along and pretend he was going to charge me for it. I posted this a little bit after it happened, before I talked to my boss, and I was pretty embarrassed, since I'm always so careful. The end of the story is that I will not have to pay for the shelf (we have tons of extras in the back, we won't miss one). Thanks for the support, everyone!

OP here :) First of all, thank you all for your advice! I'm afraid though, that it's a rather small company (around 10 full time employees) so we don't have an HR departement. I'm not sure about the difference between "being fired" and "being laid off", but my situation could be described as: "being fired because my company decided to save some money and that they didn't need someone on the position I'm currently working at." Here in Germany we get ALG (Arbeitslosengeld, roughly translates to "unemployment money") for a year after working for at least two years. It's around 60% of the persons original salary. The catch is: you only get it, if you're fired or quit for (very) good reasons (harassment, threats, etc.). If you quit without one of those reasons you don't get anything for 1-3 months. Also you don't get it for 3 months if you're fired because of anything you did (stealing, forgery...) So it's a tricky situation right now. I wrote my boss an email explaining most of the things you stated (that I feel uncomfortable forging his signature, for example) and asking whether it wasn't possible for me to just write the notice and have him sign it as soon as he's back. This way I have to set the date back, because I can only be fired with a 2 months' notice which isn't stricly legal, but he agreed to it. He isn't really that bad of a person, actually that whole idea came from HIS boss and he was just the unlucky messenger. So yeah, I'm going to write the notice and put it on his desk to sign once he gets back and hope, the whole mess turns out alright.