LAST ORDERS: A quick-fire look back at the Monday just gone.

It’s running close to the end of business for a Monday that just seemed to zip past, flying faster than a scalded cat on its way to a warehouse full of cold water and cream.

But we’ve got just enough time to catch up on a few little bits’n’pieces from the world of the ASX, and business(ish) headlines, before Uber’s price surging kicks in for the afternoon and we all get stuck where we are until everything calms down again, sometime around midnight.

FROM THE HEADLINES

From Europe comes news of a French chappie whose joie de vivre has apparently been surgically removed, after he took his employer Cubik Partners to court over his right not to be much fun at all at work.

According to the Washington Post, Monsieur Sad-Saque LaRue was outraged by his employers demands that he perform mock sexual acts, call his co-workers crude nicknames and obliging him to share his bed with another employee during work functions, all while being encouraged to drink to excess.

Of course, everyone has the right to live their lives their own way – and when the man (identified in court documents only as “Mr T”, which is a great method of being anonymised in court proceedings, unless you’re actually 80s TV icon Mr T…) was dismissed for refusing to take part in such boorish activities, he was fired.

Good news for Mr T – the courts sided with him, but it remains unclear if they have to give him money and he gets to stay home, or if he must be reinstated and his colleagues spend the next 5 years being all grouchy at him for ruining their fun.

Still, imagine being deemed too square to work at a place called Cubik Partners… That’s gotta sting.

LAST ORDERS

A quick dive into some reconciliatory news this afternoon, as it appears that Cronos (ASX:CAU) and its former chief medical officer and director Dr Ben Jansen have buried the hatchet.

Reports emerged earlier this year that the company and Jansen had parted ways, with Cronos alleging a “repeated pattern of inappropriate behaviour, lack of judgement and poor performance” on its former Chief Medico’s part.

Understandably, this upset a few of the larger shareholders – most notably, Dr Jansen’s wife Elizabeth, who quite sensationally turned on Cronos chief executive Rodney Cocks and executive director Guy Headley, making accusations of grossly inflated pay packets flying about the place in an executive environment that created “conflict of interest and nepotism”.

Separately, Dr Jansen’s cousin Matua Jansen had put forward a proposal to have Cocks and Headley jettisoned from Cronos in a “complete separation of the board and executive management”.

And here’s where it got sticky for Cronos – between Elizabeth Jansen (acting as trustee for Stanford Investment Trust – the largest Cronos shareholder with 23.43% of the company and Matua Jansen’s 9.93% stake through the Whanau Family Trust, there was considerable angst that it could be curtains for the Cronos Exec team.

Cue some spirited and vigorous mud-slinging in all directions, which is very rarely a good look for anyone involved – but, as of today, it appears to be over.

An announcement to the ASX today from Cronos reads in part: “The Company and Benjamin Jansen acknowledge that their previous statements may have caused offence to each other, and both parties regret that the relationship between them had started to erode.

“However, moving forward, Cronos Australia and Benjamin Jansen are both committed to seeing the Company develop and grow into a global leader in the medicinal cannabis industry and beyond.”

To whit, Mrs Jansen has formally advised the company and its shareholders that she withdraws her statement from earlier this year, and will now throw her considerably large 29,890,570 share chunk of the company behind the Board’s recommendations at the upcoming Cronos AGM.