I was surprised to see that Jeff Garlin - the co-star on both ABC's The Goldbergs and HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm - has been removed from the former show and won't be back for its final episode of the year or next season, if the comedy gets renewed.

The accusations against him are plentiful (you can read about all of them here) and it sounds like he deserved to be turfed, despite the fact his on-screen personas are pretty appealing. He certainly doesn't seem to be very sorry for what he did and even more or less admits to most of it. 

All of this led me to think back to my own time in TV and radio, although certainly not on a scale that Garlin occupied. Most of the people I worked with seemed pretty terrific overall, but there were always some you just didn't really like that much. You avoided them as much as possible, except when you directly had to work with them on something - and even then, it would be brief. 

But I do remember one guy who likely would never have made it as long as he did in this day and age. I won't say his name, though he died many years ago, but he was not only on the radio doing a talk show but he was regularly featured in a Toronto newspaper column. To put it bluntly, this guy was a raging alcoholic and openly admitted it. 

He would come into the station half in the bag and then proceed to pour booze into his coffee cup repeatedly while he on the air talking with callers. As the night wore on, he would get progressively more out of it and start slurring his words. 

That was bad enough. But then he'd start getting abusive to those of us working behind the scenes to try to save his ass on air. After a few weeks of this, I finally went to station management and told them I refused to work that show anymore and to get someone else, the first and only time I've ever done anything like that. Lucky for me, they agreed. 

(They wound up assigning a real stoner in the control room, and the two seemed to suit each other perfectly, as one got drunker on air and the other on the board came in already high. How that thing stayed on the station as long as it did is a mystery to me.) Back in those days (this would have been the early 80s or so - ironically, the same time period The Goldbergs takes place in) HR wasn't really a huge factor and it would take a major scandal to get someone fired, let alone suspended. 

I do want to note that almost all of the people I met in radio were terrific, even those with inflated egos. We mostly treated each other decently, knowing all of us were working towards the same goal. But still, I can't be the only one who's gone through this. 

I'm wondering if others ran into this over their careers and what, if anything, did you do about it?