The Day I Got a Pink Slip Trivia Quiz

Answer: Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison began his working life selling newspapers on the Grand Trunk Railroad as a way to fund his scientific experiments. He eventually found work as a telegraph operator all over the Central Western United States, and favored the night shift as it gave him the chance to conduct his experiments during his free time in between messages. He was known for being more engrossed in his science experiments than in his job - one manager described him as always having his nose buried in a copy of "Scientific American", and he would take time off from work to purchase chemicals for his experiments, and leave forgotten wires and jars in his wake. His constant moonlighting got him into trouble on at least one occasion, when a mishap cost him his job at the Associated Press Bureau in Louisville. As he recalled years later, "I went one night into the battery-room to obtain some sulfuric acid for experimenting. The carboy tipped over, the acid ran out, went through to the manager's room below, and ate up his desk and all the carpet. The next morning I was summoned before him, and told that what the company wanted was operators, not experimenters. I was at liberty to take my pay and get out."

Edison eventually left telegraphy entirely and established a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey to devote all of his time to his inventions. His efforts in developing an inexpensive way to mass produce light bulbs led to the formation of the Edison Electric Light Company, which was the predecessor to the General Electric Company. Edison famously registered over a thousand patents in his lifetime, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1973 for his work on electric lighting, motion pictures, and the phonograph.

Answer: Anna Wintour

The influential Anna Wintour may be best known for successfully steering "Vogue" from the brink of decline and back to a position of prominence in the fashion industry, and helping to build the magazine and its publisher Condé Nast into an empire, but things were not always smooth sailing for the fashion powerhouse. In 1975, she was hired as a junior fashion editor for "Harper's Bazaar" in New York, but her bosses disagreed with her artistic choices. "I was told I would never understand the American market," she later recalled. "I did a shoot in Paris, and I remember it very clearly; it was a couture collection, and I put dreadlocks in the model's hair. It was too much for them. That was the end of me at 'Harper's Bazaar'." She was given the boot just nine months into the job, but Wintour looks back on the incident as a valuable learning experience. "It didn't feel it at the time, but it was definitely a good thing for what it taught me," she once said. "It is important to have setbacks, because that is the reality of life. Perfection doesn't exist." Wintour recommends that "everyone should be sacked at least once in their career".

Wintour's trademark bob haircut, sunglasses, and aloof demeanor have reportedly inspired Edna Mode's appearance in "The Incredibles", and Johnny Depp's portrayal of Willy Wonka in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", and she was famously the inspiration for the character of Miranda Priestly, the antagonist of the novel "The Devil Wears Prada" by Lauren Weisberger, one of Wintour's former personal assistants. The character was portrayed by Meryl Streep in the 2006 film adaptation. Wintour showed she was a good sport when she attended the film's premiere dressed in - you guessed it - Prada.

Answer: Tim Burton

Tim Burton was offered a job as an apprentice animator in Disney on the strength of his short film "Stalk of the Celery Monster", which he made as a student in CalArts in 1979. He worked as a concept artist on several Disney films, but found it difficult to distance himself from the dark sensibilities that he would become known for in "Beetlejuice", "Batman Returns", and most of his future films. "I couldn't draw all those four-legged Disney foxes," he once said about his work on "The Fox and the Hound" (1981). "I couldn't even fake the Disney style. Mine looked like roadkills." As Brad Bird recalled, "He did these amazing designs for 'Black Cauldron' that were better than anything they had in the movie - he did these griffins that actually had claws for mouths, and they were really great and really scary, in the best way." His contemporaries Don Hahn and Gary Trousdale felt that Disney just didn't know what to do with Burton, as his work was too unconventional for the studio at the time. Burton made "Frankenweenie", a 30-minute black-and-white film about a boy who uses electricity to reanimate his dog after it is hit by a car, which turned out to be the last straw, and he parted ways with Disney in 1984.

As Burton would later recall, "It was a strange period in the company's history. It was a low point for animation, not just for Disney but for everything." Still, Burton credits the studio for giving him the artistic freedom to make short films that were different, like "Vincent", a black-and-white stop motion film about a child who idolizes Vincent Price, which led to him getting his first feature directing gig for "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" (1985). Burton would go on to achieve critical and popular success with films like "Edward Scissorhands", "Batman", "Ed Wood" and "Alice in Wonderland". In 2012, Burton reteamed with Disney on the feature-length stop-motion remake of "Frankenweenie", the film that got him fired 28 years earlier.

Answer: Harland Sanders

The man we know as Colonel Sanders finally found success at the ripe old age of 65 when he began franchising his fried chicken restaurant into what would become KFC, but he endured a string of professional failures in his early life. His first wife thought he had "an itchy foot" and "would never be able to keep a job", and she had a point.

When he was 10, he was sent to clear brush from a neighbor's wood lot, but he was distracted by "bluebirds and red squirrels and other things" and was fired. He was fired from his job as a locomotive fireman for the Illinois Central Railroad for alleged insubordination, but Sanders claimed that he was let go as payback over an industrial dispute.

He practiced law for a while in the courts of the Justice of the Peace in Little Rock, but his dreams of becoming the next Clarence Darrow ended after he was arrested for battery when he got into a fight with his own client in open court.

He became the top Michelin tire salesman in Kentucky in the 1920s, but according to KFC he was "fired for his temper".

He worked in Indiana as an insurance salesman for Prudential and became fairly successful, but got fired for refusing to turn in his accounts. He managed a gas station in Nicholasville for Standard Oil, but it closed during the depression. His second gas station for Shell marked a turning of the tide. Sanders saw a need and began serving home-cooked food to his customers, eventually opening his own restaurant. He successfully franchised his concept to over 600 outlets in the US before selling the Kentucky Fried Chicken company to a group of investors, staying on as a spokesperson. The franchise eventually grew to more than 18,000 outlets in over 100 countries.

Answer: Stan Lee

Stan Lee always wanted to be a writer, but growing up during the depression meant that his options were limited. He worked various part time jobs through high school, and after he graduated he went to work full-time for a trouser manufacturer in New York's Garment District as one of the office's two errand boys.

The pay was little and the work was demeaning. As he explained in an interview, "The offices were filled with salesmen - each had a little cubbyhole - and when they would want something, any one of them would yell 'Boy!', and whichever one of the two of us was closest to him had to come running and get him what he wanted." Just before Christmas, the firm decided that they couldn't afford two office boys, and because they never bothered to learn their names, Stan Lee was let go because the other boy had seniority. "The experience taught me two things," he later came to realize. "First, I would never again let myself be an unnoticed cog in a machine. If whoever I worked for wouldn't take the trouble to check out my performance, then the job wasn't for me. Second, if I was ever in a position of authority, I'd do my best to treat the people under me like human beings, appreciating the good things they did and offering suggestions when they needed help." Stan went on to work for a comic book company called Timely Publications, and the rest is history, as they say.

He was appointed editorial director at a young age, and he went on to build the company into the multimedia giant known as Marvel Comics.

Answer: Sue Grafton

Before finding success as an author of mystery and detective fiction, Sue Grafton worked as a screenwriter for 15 years in Hollywood, and actually had some success with her work in television and movies. She won a Christopher Award for "Walking Through the Fire" (1979), and was nominated for an Edgar Award for "Love on the Run" (1985).

She credits the experience with teaching her the basics of structuring a story, and handling dialogue and action scenes, but on the whole she disliked her time in Tinseltown.

She abhorred the process of writing by committee, which often resulted in output that was mediocre. Getting fired from that Dolly Parton movie was a blow to her ego, but she came to see it as a learning experience. "In Hollywood I learned two things about myself: One, I'm not a good team player. And two, I'm not a good sport," she said in an interview in 2008. "I knew I had to get back to working solo before I was ground into a bloody nub." At the time of her setback, Grafton had been working on the first in what would become the "Alphabet Series" of novels for which she is best known.

She focused her efforts on completing her novel, and published "'A' is for Alibi" in 1982. By the time she got to "'G' is for Gumshoe" in 1990, she was able to leave Hollywood for good and concentrate full-time on her work as a novelist.

Answer: Henry Hudson

Henry Hudson and his 22-strong crew were financed by backers from England who were keen to find a trading route to the Orient. They set off from London in April 1610 on the Discovery, journeying to Iceland and Greenland before navigating the Hudson Strait into Hudson Bay. The party spent months exploring the bay's eastern coast but by late October the Discovery was trapped on all sides by ice, and Hudson and his crew were forced to spend the very harsh winter on shore. By the time the ice cleared the following spring, things were coming to a head. Hudson wanted to press on with their mission, but most of the crew wanted to sail back to England. The crew mutinied on June 22, 1611, and rounded up Hudson, his teenaged son, and seven other crewmen who were either loyal to Hudson or too sick to continue on the voyage, and cast them on a small boat with a few provisions before setting off. Henry Hudson and his companions were never heard from again.

In Washington Irving's short story "Rip Van Winkle", the title character wanders up into the Catskills and encounters the ghosts of Henry Hudson and his men who were left behind by the mutinous crew. He partakes of their moonshine and falls asleep, and wakes up 20 years later to find that he has slept through the American Revolutionary War.

Answer: George Foreman

George Foreman left school at 16 and worked odd jobs until his brother convinced him to work as a furniture mover at Wald Transfer and Storage in Houston, Texas. He started out as a temp but hoped to become a regular. As he said in his autobiography, "If I proved myself to the bosses, they would hire me on full time, up my salary, and, best of all, give me a pair of overalls with my name embroidered in a little circle above the pocket." His dreams were dashed when he was working an emergency job that involved moving office furniture and filing cabinets for 16 hours a day. Foreman was exhausted by the third day, and he made the mistake of using his hour dinner break to rest, and slept through till the next morning.

When he pleaded with his boss to give him a second chance, he was paid for the time he had worked and was told not to come back.

The experience had a lasting impression on the young Foreman, and would determine how he treated his own employees in the future. "I remember the humiliation I suffered, so I've taken it easy on a lot of people. I always want to give a person a chance," he once said. Looking back on his firing, Foreman acknowledged that it allowed him to "pursue his destiny". Foreman would go on to have a long and successful career as a boxer.

He earned the World Heavyweight title by beating the then-undefeated Joe Frazier in 1973, lost his title to Muhammad Ali in the "Rumble in the Jungle" the following year, and then regained the title when he defeated Michael Moorer at the age of 45. After his retirement from boxing, Foreman found success as an entrepreneur and is best known for promoting the George Foreman Grill. But for all his successes, Foreman still remembers the first job he lost. "I daydream about the green shirt with the white patch," he once said in an interview. "That's all I've ever wanted."

Answer: Steve Jobs

Together with Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs co-founded Apple Computers in 1976 in the garage of his home in Los Altos. He built the company into a billion dollar business, and became one of the youngest people to make it on the "Forbes" list of the richest Americans. Disappointing sales of the Macintosh personal computer in 1984 led to disagreements between Jobs and CEO John Sculley over the direction of the company. Jobs was taken off the Macintosh team and marginalized in a move that (in his own words) "left [him] with no work to do and no access even to regular management reports". Jobs resigned as Apple's Chairman in September 1985, but for years he said that he was forced out of his own company.

In his famous Stanford commencement address delivered in 2005, Jobs spoke about his ouster from Apple. "I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me," he said. "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.

It freed me to enter into one of the most creative periods of my life." In the years following his departure from Apple, Jobs helped to set up Pixar, which went on to become an animation powerhouse, and started a new computer company called NeXT. In one of the greatest comeback stories ever, NeXT was acquired by Apple in 1997 in a deal that saw Jobs return to the company he founded as an advisor and then CEO. With Jobs at the helm, Apple entered a period of innovation and profitability that continued up to his death in 2011.

Answer: J.K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling always wanted to be a writer but studied languages at university and even took courses to become a bilingual secretary at the urging of her parents, who were keen to see their daughter enter a vocation that would pay the bills. She worked for two years as a researcher at Amnesty International's London office, in what she has described as "one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences" of her life, but even then it was hard to ignore her true calling.

She recalls "sloping off to write stories" every chance she got.

She eventually resigned and embarked on a series of secretarial jobs, but she readily admits that she was "the worst secretary ever" because she was disorganized and constantly distracted. "All I ever liked about working in offices was being able to type up stories on the computer when no one was looking," Rowling would later recall. "I was never paying much attention in meetings because I was usually scribbling bits of my latest stories in the margins of the pad, or choosing excellent names for the characters.

This is a problem when you are supposed to be taking the minutes of the meeting." Her bosses noticed, and she was let go from more than one job for her lackluster performance, including a brief stint at the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. She struggled for years to make ends meet while pursuing her writing, and became in her own words "as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless". Things turned around for Rowling with the publication of the first instalment of her "Harry Potter" book series that launched a successful series of films, theme parks, and other tie-ins and spinoffs to form a multi-billion dollar franchise. Rowling looks back on her early failures as crucial in shaping her future accomplishments. As she said when she spoke at Harvard University's 2008 commencement ceremony, "Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged."