Graduation Annals

Congratulations, Tom, You're Fired

Tom Gilmore says he thinks he is the first '96 to be fired. He has the further distinction of getting the ax before he even showed up for work. Gilmore had accepted an offer from Putnam Associates, a health-care consulting firm in Burlington, Massachusetts, last Jan uary. Two weeks before he was to report to work last summer, "a Dear John letter arrived at my door," he says. Turns out one of the senior partners had absconded in the middle of the night with a batch of clients' confidential files. The results: a loss of almost half the consulting firm's clientele, a raft of litigation, and a first-strike pink slip for Tom Gilmore. "And, since I was never actually employed, I would receive no severance pay." Gilmore, who would have been an analyst with the firm, says he is "keeping my options

Gilmore '96 got the ax.