True story...

One of those water cooler stories... or in this case told by our Solaris instructor from Sun Microsystems during break time...

So he was contracted in to this global insurance company... Zurich or something unpronouncable like that. And on the day he got to the place (a Canada branch office or something), there was like 50 taxi's parked out back.

As it turns out, it was a day for layoffs... and people who were laid off were first escorted by security to their desk to have their passwords and stuff reset, and then out back into a taxi where they're sent off home. Of course they're free to get out a few blocks away and walk back to get their car which they parked at the company when coming to work...

All this so as to disclaim from any possible liability, insurance-wise, on their last day.

...

Yeah.

Spit-take...

From an EG pseudo-fic on the bbs:

我家小白白啊～～名字叫做白玉堂，字泽琰。外号锦毛鼠。
不过，这个名字起的就不是太好。　因为从五行上来看：
玉字属金，堂字属土。泽字属水，琰字属火。
五行中单单缺了木。

(snip)

那么改成什么好呢？白是你的姓，不能改，含有五行的字也动不得～～那么就只有改外号了，“毛鼠”两个字也有“猫鼠”的谐音在所以也不能改。那么，我看就叫你“棉毛鼠”好了！

(snip)

——切忌高楼啊。
平时的住房就要小心，遇见含有“高”的楼房建筑，比如说冲霄，凌云的，千万、绝对不要乱闯啊！


...Note that 白玉堂 died infiltrating 冲霄楼. I have to wonder if his name was chosen for exactly the above purpose. But probably not since his earliest literary incarnation as a mouse-spirit probably didn't include 冲霄楼.

http://www.xiaoyaojing.com/wind/read.php?tid=32396