This list of oddball complaints from managers about their employees reminds us that, in the workplace, everybody's crazy but you and me, and I'm starting to worry about you.
My construction executive father-in-law once employed an engineer who the IT people dinged for looking at Internet porn, at work. The young man was called in, informed that Internet porn-gazing was against company policy.
The next week, IT detected more of the same from the engineer's computer. This time, he was called in and warned if it happened again, it would mean termination.
That was a Friday. On Monday, they found the employee's desk cleaned off and a post-it on his computer:
"If I can't look at porn, I don't want to work here."
Hey, I've worked for publishers my whole life. I could tell you about employees who got married in the conference room, the accountant who threw away customers' checks because she didn't want to put them into the system, a CEO who choked a telephone repairman, an employee who got drunk at the Christmas party and started sucking out of the keg tube … oh, I told that one last week.
You got any good ones for me?
Well, at least this idiot made it easy on them and left on his own.
The most recent story I heard was from a friend who works in the Executive/Marketing office of a major retailer. The guy’s desk was positioned such that his back was facing directly to the main door of the office, so anyone walking in the place – including million-dollar clients – got a clear, full-on look at the woo-woo’s and doo-dads he was surfing.
They fired him, but only because numerous people complained to HR. The HR person actually asked the complainers: “Are you filing a FORMAL complaint?” implying that they would only deal with it if they were forced into it by paper trails they couldn’t ignore. Brilliant! Clueless HR strikes again
I hear stories like this more often that I’d believe possible and every time I think: “Where did you EVER get the idea that looking at porn at work was okay?!?! Seriously – HOW do you get the idea this is acceptable behaviour at work????
Freaks!
I could one-up this, but I shan’t.
I’ll only say that some of these fellows really need to carve out some Me Time at home.