Joseph Lacher was the head of the largest unit of Allstate. Two weeks ago, he was abruptly fired, with little explanation. What happened, Joe?

Listen up! An exciting employment opportunity for members of the flack community has just landed in the Gawker tip box:

Olivia Pepper, "Student, NYU," has written a charming little ditty for the Huffington Post entitled "Why I'm Not Working This Summer." It starts with the most ominous opening sentence in the history of oblivious first person essays:

Speaking of hugely popular chain stores with a liberal reputation which are actually staunch enemies of unions: Starbucks! The Industrial Workers of the World have been trying, with little success, to organize Starbucks workers for years. This week, they're picketing select Starbucks locations in major cities, partly in sympathy with Chilean Starbucks workers who are already on strike. From an IWW press release:

Late Friday afternoon, an employee of the Whole Foods Market in Toronto sent this epic resignation letter to the entire company. It's an alternatingly amusing, enlightening, and occasionally infuriating read—but a good read, nonetheless.

Whew! Sure is poor out there today! (How poor is it?) I tell ya, it's poor!

Having already brought you horrifying true stories of fried rats and poop and murder, we return today with our third and final installment of Kitchen Nightmares: Do not read while eating! Really, don't. Seriously.

Yesterday, we brought you true stories of restaurant horror, courtesy of you, the grease-stained Gawker readership. Today: ten more tales of skeevy managers, bodily fluids, and stone cold murder.

Yesterday, we asked you, the ketchup-stained Gawker readership, for your horror stories of working in restaurants. My, did you fail to disappoint! Below, ten tales of glory.

Laura Fotusky, clerk of rural Barker, N.Y., quit her post on Tuesday rather than grant marriage licenses to gay folks. She would probably had more fun staying and being really judge-y with the marrying gays, but, well, God hates gay marriage! (She's posted her resignation letter here, if you really care.) Gay couples in the region are better off driving the hour to Niagra Falls anyway and going the whole nine yards with the honeymoon suite and everything. In any event—Laura—really—we mean this—don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. [Politico; image, not of Barker, and not of Fotusky, via Shutterstock]

If you want a job in America today, you'll probably end up working in a restaurant. (Yay!) One in ten Americans already work in restaurants or bars, and the WSJ says that since the recession hit, restaurant jobs have increased at more than twice the rate of other jobs.

As journalism jobs dry up across the country, one man seems to have found a pretty decent beat. "William Breathes" somehow convinced Denver alt-weekly newspaper Westword to let him cover the medical marijuana industry in Colorado, which boasts over 300 dispensaries. That means he more or less gets baked and writes about it. But, as he explained NPR, "When I'm reviewing marijuana, I'm looking for how clean it's grown, how well it's grown." And besides sampling the product, he also reviews the facilities:

The new monthly jobs report is out, and guess what? Unemployment is up to 9.2%, the economy only added 18,000 jobs (one-tenth of the number needed to find jobs for all the poor saps entering the workforce right now), we created 44,000 fewer jobs than we thought in April and May, 14.1 million Americans are out of work, and roving bandit gangs are lighting tire fires in the street outside your house right now.

Women: why don't they go out and get a job? In a time when our nation's rents are rising, it might be kind of nice—I'm just saying—it might be kind of nice if someone in this apartment with a vagina started bringing in some income. I'm just saying.

The media job market is the pits right now, there's no doubt about that, but there are jobs out there — you just have to know where to look! For example, JournalismJobs.com is currently listing this plum magazine assignment for any seasoned reporter:

Today we were once again bemoaning that everything's broke and the future is doomed. This led to a discussion of economics and politics and whatnot, which led to a good joke. Here it is!

Film school is the journalism school of people who can't write. It's a place where kids with vague dreams of "making projects" go to chill out for a few years and learn that you should never call a "film" a "movie." Then they come out and get a shitty job for little money that pays them purely in proximity to power.

Earlier this month, employees at a New York Target store voted against unionizing after a long, protracted battle between union organizers and corporate operatives. Now, the union's filed an official challenge, alleging that Target broke the law.

The Mitt Romney campaign released a web video this morning about young Ryan King, a recent college graduate from destitute Midland, Michigan, who drives around the local trash and destruction all day, just lookin' for a job. He has $3 and only eats bologna sandwiches. Why won't President Obama let him get a job? He is a failed leader.

Good news on the national debt competition front (it is a competition, yes? Check this): the size of America's national debt will soon equal the entire size of our annual economy! I'm no "certified economist" or "New Yorker term-coiner," but I believe the official name for this economic period is "The Tipping Point." Think of it as the gateway to fun!