Rather than plow into the carnage, he jackknifed his truck and, according to news accounts quoting the California Highway Patrol, saved the life of the trucker in front of him as well as his own. A pink slip. His employers, Fort Worth, Tex.-based Conway Truck Loading Services issued a terse statement saying the accident could have been prevented, even though they wouldn't elaborate on how. An Associated Press story ran nationally, and Bloom got several job offers, but Conway didn't get much mileage out of its handling of the situation. With all the news lately about students drinking themselves to death,maybe they were trying to be topical.
Nobody feels like it was a stupid thing to do.
Less than a week later,CEO Michael Jeffries announced the company did not advocate underage or irresponsible drinking and would revise the catalogs. Still, the company's catalogs have come under new scrutiny for potentially irresponsible marketing. Recently, the Seattle Times reported that mothers of little girls were protesting a new issue featuring frolicking naked young people for being too suggestive. But doing business and communicating in California are different than North Carolina. NationsBank President Kenneth Lewis seemed to set the stage for the culture clash when, according to San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Veverka, he threatened to cancel the bank's 200-plus subscriptions to the trade journal American Banker because of an opinion piece about the bank's community banking commitments.