Wow, the stuff we missed while we were away continues to amaze us in new and exciting ways. We just happened across an article in the Mercury News which leads off with this baffling introduction: "Maybe you remember Kelsey Jeffries, the woman who split her time between a professional boxing career and a job working on a web site for Apple Computer retailers." Trust us: you can't begin to imagine the desolation and regret stemming from the fact that we don't remember any such thing. Oh, the wondrous things we missed...

While we don't know the backstory, the latest development in Ms. Jeffries's life is definitely soap-worthy material; it seems that she was summarily laid off a few months back. Apple claims that the pink slip was just one more flush in a toilet bowl economy; Kelsey, on the other hand, suspects foul play. Right after her first appearance in a human interest story in the Mercury News (she apparently won the world featherweight championship), her managers at Apple gave her a "stern talking-to" for having spoken with the press without checking with them first. Which all seems a little strange, given that the original Merc article focuses almost entirely on the boxing; it only mentions her Apple gig in passing. It's not like she told the world about the PowerPC 970-powered video iPods with antigravity technology shipping this Christmas or anything.

Anyway, it seems that TechTV and Telemundo saw the Merc piece and contacted her about doing a couple of interviews. Apple told her not to. She did anyway-- though she "avoided talking about her work at Apple." Nevertheless, both interviews mentioned her day job, and just weeks later, Apple shafted her. Coincidenza? Apple claims that it was-- an Apple spokesperson claims the layoff was just one of many in a standard reorganization-- but to most observers, the timing is a little fishy.

At first we had no idea why Apple would be so upset by an employee doing interviews about an activity totally unrelated to her duties at the company. But then we read the first Mercury article, and all the pieces started to fall into place. Consider, first, the opening line: "Kelsey Jeffries loves her job at Apple Computer, but she likes boxing better." Perhaps Apple bristled at the idea of any employee publicly admitting that working at Apple isn't the employment equivalent of sex, beer, and pizza all rolled into one. (And not in the literal, messy sense.)

Here's the real clincher, though: Jeffries was described as "arguably the only person at Apple tougher than Steve Jobs." A-ha. Clearly Steve didn't want any competition around angling for his job...