Food Network’s Robert Irvine Fired for Fabricating Resume

British chef Robert Irvine, host of Food Network’s Dinner: Impossible, has been given the ax for embellishing his resume.

Irvine has claimed to have prepared meals for the British Royal Family as well as numerous U.S. presidents, among other things, but now acknowledges that those events are complete fabrications.

As a result, The Food Network has said that it will not renew Irvine’s contract after this season.

Dinner: Impossible has enjoyed a four-season run on the Food Network. The network has claimed it may reconsider following the season, but for the time being producers are searching for a new host.

I’ve been where Irvine is today. In fact, I’ve been canned for the exact same reason as he was-but in my case I wasn’t dishonest.

Just two months after graduating college I had a job at a publishing company. I put on my resume that I was a college graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in English Composition, even though the degree evaluations process can take a few months and I hadn’t been given a diploma. Technically I wasn’t a college graduate for another few months, I suppose, but I had completed over 43 courses and spent four years (and a summer) of my youth studying a college campus, so I felt that I’d earned it.

I interviewed, was hired, and started work a week or so later. I loved the job. I didn’t have to answer telephones, got to work largely on my own, and was doing something I loved to do: evaluating writing. It was what I worked my entire academic career to do, and I was finally getting my start. The company for which I worked required that everyone working there had at least a B.A.-it didn’t matter what field, but a B.A. was required to work there.

A little over two weeks after I started, I was told by my boss that there was a problem: they couldn’t verify that I had graduated. In fact, they couldn’t verify that I had ever gone to the university at all. Huh? I had provided a copy of my unofficial transcript before I even interviewed, listing every course I had taken and every grade I received, so shouldn’t that be enough? I explained to them what the woman at the university explained to me: evaluations of college degrees can take up to ten months, and don’t always show up immediately after graduation.

But my boss didn’t buy it. She looked at me like I was a bold-faced liar, and gave me a week to provide proof that I was a college graduate-or had even attended college at all. I went back to the university, but by the time I got off of work everything was closed. I asked for the morning off the following day to get things straightened out, but was denied. So finally I go on a Saturday, pay $20 for two same-day copies of my official transcript (with the university seal and everything). It had every course I had ever taken and the grades I received in each, my overall number of units, my overall grade point average, a university phone number to verify the information, and my graduation status was “in evaluation.”

I figured this would be enough. I even got two copies for them. I presented it to my boss the following Monday, and she says “okay that looks good.” But two hours later, she wants to talk to me. “This is not enough, you have no proof that you ever graduated or took the correct amount of courses there.” I asked her to call the number at the university and ask them about the process or number of units needed, but she refused. I asked her to wait a week or two for my diploma to come in, as maybe I could expedite the process if I bothered the people at the evaluations office enough. She refused.

So I was given the boot after just three weeks. And the worst part was that they absolutely loved me. I did my job well, it was in a field I liked, and I couldn’t believe I spent four years in college to be told I’m not educated enough. I was upset and disappointed, but I moved on.

A few months later, after I got my diploma from the university, I made a copy of it on my scanner and mailed it to my former boss. I wanted her to know how wrong she was. No letter or note, just the folded up copy of a college diploma with my name on it mailed to her at the office.

Maybe if I go for a Masters I’ll mail her a copy of that one too.