Professional Darwinism: Update to OP on p.74

[auntmeegs]

I knew this girl who was fired for being on this silly etiquette board called Ehell all day long at work…..

[Sabbyfrog2]

Wow.    Some of these posts are shockers!

I'd like to report about the database guy who used to have regularly mid-afternoon 'telephone conferences' in one of the meeting rooms at the back of the building.  One day someone went in to give him a telephone message and found him asleep in the comfy chair.  I can't really say it was a case of Professional Darwinism though, as he never got fired.

"No!  No!  Not the comfy chair!!"  (Thank you, Monty Python.)

You beat me to it! I was totally thinking the same thing! 

[supernova]

I knew this girl who was fired for being on this silly etiquette board called Ehell all day long at work…..

Great; now my shoulders are twitching...  I'm expecting someone to come up behind me at my desk, tap me on the shoulder, and say, "Can you come in here for a moment?" 

     - saphie

[AM in AL]

I knew this girl who was fired for being on this silly etiquette board called Ehell all day long at work…..

Great; now my shoulders are twitching...  I'm expecting someone to come up behind me at my desk, tap me on the shoulder, and say, "Can you come in here for a moment?" 

     - saphie

me too... and I'm home sick.

[BeagleMommy]

Here's mine:

Bronze Medal:  a woman about my age was hired for a secretarial position at my university in my office.  Three days after being hired she announces that her ex-boyfriend was back in the picture and wanted to take her on a Mexican vacation for a week (that she paid for because he was "between jobs".  Yes, she told us this).  When it was mentioned that she did not have any vacation time accumulated and could be fired for taking time off this soon into her position she replied "At least it would only be a $9 an hour job, not a $12 an hour job."  What?!  We tried telling her that her benefits and free schooling for her children more than made up for the lower pay, but she went off to Mexico anyway.  She was told not to return.

Silver Medal:  a young woman (about 23) was hired to work with our international students.  She would regularly fall asleep during meetings and blame it on sinus medication.  One day she called off sick saying she had a bad migraine from sinus.  Yeah, if you're going to call in sick don't come in 2 days later with a tan, new manicure and hair extensions.

Gold Medal:  one of my former supervisors was working toward his Ph.D. in business administration.  Part of his education required an internship.  He did not want to do his internship with our university and asked his supervisor if she would make his position part time, pay him his full time salary and let him do his internship at a rival university.  His supervisor told him no and he blustered that he'd quit if he didn't get his way.  She said "Fine. Turn in your letter of resignation on your way out."

[Auntie Mame]

Wow.    Some of these posts are shockers!

I'd like to report about the database guy who used to have regularly mid-afternoon 'telephone conferences' in one of the meeting rooms at the back of the building.  One day someone went in to give him a telephone message and found him asleep in the comfy chair.  I can't really say it was a case of Professional Darwinism though, as he never got fired.

"No!  No!  Not the comfy chair!!"  (Thank you, Monty Python.)

You beat me to it! I was totally thinking the same thing! 

Ah yes, my people!

[pierrotlunaire0]

Gold Medal:  one of my former supervisors was working toward his Ph.D. in business administration.  Part of his education required an internship.  He did not want to do his internship with our university and asked his supervisor if she would make his position part time, pay him his full time salary and let him do his internship at a rival university.  His supervisor told him no and he blustered that he'd quit if he didn't get his way.  She said "Fine. Turn in your letter of resignation on your way out."

Bluff!  You have a call!  Call for Bluff!

[jane7166]

DH told me one once about a manager at his company who had been recruited to come work there.  Manager made a ton of money at this job.  His underlings start complaining to other managers that they can't find their boss after 11:30 am.  He goes away for lunch and can't be found. 

Then the company gets an call from someone who happens to be the spouse of an employee in DH's company.  She works at another company that does translating of scientific documents and she is sure that the new guy who works part-time in the afternoon is the same guy her DH has been telling her about, the manager who is unavailable in the afternoon.  Same name, same description. 

After a brief investigation, Manager is fired from DH's company.  And translator company. 

[Suze]

really does make you wonder what is going on in their heads to risk a good job over something minor.

[Miss Misery]

Why you shouldn't friend your boss on Facebook (NSFW)   

[SingMeAway]

Years ago, I worked part-time in the admitting department (ER and office) of a local children's hospital.  My co-worker's husband was the ward clerk in the ER.  She was quite the pill, but he was even more so.  He was a complete, obnoxious know-it-all - he had no medical training, but would triage the patients coming in (a nurse's job only) and give out medical information to the parents.  He would tell us how to do our job and come into our section, turn up our radio to full-blast and leave it that way when we were in the middle of registering someone and couldn't leap up to turn it off.  How exactly he got away with this (and how the hospital didn't get sued), I don't know.  He was responsible for scheduling though and would kiss-up to all the nurses there by giving them whatever shifts they wanted, so we figured that some people were turning a blind eye to the goings on.

After he had been there for quite a few years, we heard whispers that he had a second job.  No big deal, right?  Wrong.  Turns out that job#2's shift started at noon.  Well, job#1's shift at the hospital didn't end until 3:30 PM, so he would show up for the first part of his shift and then leave half-way through, but he was still drawing a full-time salary.

All that came to an abrupt end when a new manager was hired and was going through the budget, etc... for the ER and wondered where the head ward clerk was in the afternoons.  She lowered the boom and he got fired.  He's lucky he didn't get charged for all the money he'd been paid while not working there!

[kherbert05]

1st principal - Would come in at like 10 am (instead of 7 or 7:30), say she had her schedule changed because she was working late at night. Didn't do walk throughs - then brought paper work and made you sign it months after the date on the work. She would tell me to tell my team we could leave at 3 instead of 3:30 because we had worked through lunch or something - then she would write up teammate she didn't like. She made we are better than people like them comments to me. Last year she was on our campus they had to cut 1 2nd grade and 1 5th grade class  because we didn't have enough students. The kids are coming in an hour to meet their teachers. The cut teachers had to be offered any job they were qualified for in the district - before TPTB could hire a new teacher.

She walked into 2nd grade and told them either you or you are leaving because I don't like you. One of the people she targeted had years more seniority than anyone else on the team. Then she came into 5th grade and said one of you has to leave but it can't be Kimberly you decide. In that case the person with the least seniority volunteered to change school. The 2nd grade teacher that left found a campus were the principal didn't hate him for no reason. (The 2nd grade teacher had prevented 2 different sets of parents from assaulting the principal - and she still treated him that way. )

There was some type of blow up between her and her cronies and they were all transferred out. She has a job - but will never advance above principal.

Teacher: Was allowed to do what ever she wanted under principal above. In the two or so weeks before a performance she takes over all the specials so they kids don't get PE, or Art. She also presents the grade level teachers with a schedule of rehersals an our or so every day for 2 weeks. Then during the performances - stop in the middle correct the kids and continue the performance. (I can't believe the principal and team leaders let her do this - in 5th grades case just weeks before the TAKS test. She even tried to cancel and endurance test practice. 

 New principal comes in and doesn't like the total chaos that is the specials team. Principal now writes the schedule to fit what the school needs. The demand that class time be given to rehearsals is no. This teacher is observed and gets a very poor PDAS review. She is put on a growth plan. She follows it and gets off - all is good. But it isn't - she goes right back to her old ways. She tries to transfer in district but no-one will take her. She is put on a 2nd growth plan. She refuses to follow it. She tells us that if current principal non-renews her then the district has to give her her choice of open positions. We warn her that isn't how it works (If her job was cut yes but not a non renew).

They have a meeting and offer to let her resign. No she wants them to non-renew her so music director has to reassign her. They say no if you are non renewed you are fired from the district. She resigns. Thing is the board renews our contracts in March/April time frame. There are still months till school lets out. She starts giving away instruments to kids - and selling them. Teachers take them away from kids and turn them into the principal.

The Principal has an aid go in and inventory everything in the room. Teacher blames the art teacher for this. Art teacher had convinced some people to donate some instruments. She was asked if the donation was to the school or teacher. She replied honestly that it was to the school. Last Day of school Music teacher comes in and starts screaming at me because her e-mail has been cut off. (She was told it would be). I just walk out the back door and go to the principal's office to call help desk to see if they can get her attachments she need forwarded to her home e-mail. Then I told principal I wanted an escort back to my room. She was soon off the campus. Awkard thing is she is a friend of my cousin.

[wolfie]

For the first story nothing happened to the coworker because while it was a scummy thing to do it isn't really something you can discipline for. And the second one I am not sure if is is real or just an urban legend that circles around.

First one - coworker's wife calls up my manager to ask for the hotel name that coworker is staying in for the business trip he is on. Manager has to tell the wife that coworker is not on a business trip but took a week's vacation. She got everything in the divorce.

Second one - Every few years we get a new laptop and have to migrate all of our files and stuff over to the new one. Some departments have someone who can copy your drive. Rumor has it that one such department found a bunch of porn on someone's computer while doing the copying.

[DoubleTrouble]

Wow.    Some of these posts are shockers!

I'd like to report about the database guy who used to have regularly mid-afternoon 'telephone conferences' in one of the meeting rooms at the back of the building.  One day someone went in to give him a telephone message and found him asleep in the comfy chair.  I can't really say it was a case of Professional Darwinism though, as he never got fired.

"No!  No!  Not the comfy chair!!"  (Thank you, Monty Python.)

One of coworkers started sleeping in her office during lunch (& a nap little bit later in the day). How did I discover this? When I needed something from her office and almost stepped on her before I was able to turn on the light Turns out she was in her 1st trimester and bone-dead tired. Lucky for her, she was not as tired later in her pregnancy but I was always extra careful from then on if I needed to go into her office

[Drunken Housewife]

A long time ago I worked at an NPR affiliate.  The station hired someone to work in the development office, and he had a bad attitude from the day one.  For example, when we had fundraisers, people had to come in on weekends and work evenings to supervise the volunteers, and he was ALWAYS significantly late for his shifts.  Some friends and I started taking bets on how late he'd be on his days; it was that bad (and I mean like 2 hours late or more at times).

He also occasionally wrote reviews  for the local paper as a freelancer.  One day, not long after he'd started, he called in sick... and then the next day in the local newspaper, he had three articles under his byline in the paper.  Obviously he'd called in sick to spend the day writing reviews.  This was profoundly stupid because the sorts of people who work at an NPR station are the sorts of people who read the newspaper thoroughly, and there is no way he could get away with this.  Unbelievably enough he was shocked and angered at being fired and did a bunch of sleazy stuff to wreak revenge on us for firing him.