My company takes the current situation very seriously. We all got a nice chunk of award points (worth merchandise and travel) for sending copies of our vaccine cards to Human Resources. There was a HUGE drawing in July for all the folks who had sent them in; a gal in the call center won the grand prize: $10,000. In addition there have been several parties (outside on our lawn) that have been specifically for folks who’ve gotten their shot. This puts us at 88% on campus.
Every Monday morning there is an email with the “rules” for coming to the physical office and listing out the most common symptoms. Among the rules is “if you’re not vaccinated you must wear a mask when you are in one of the buildings.”
An associate got fired two weeks ago. Her team had come into the office on four occasions for a day and none of them has masked. This gal eventually told someone on the team that she had not had her Fauci Ouchie. Took just a day for that tidbit to get up to HR and she was let go that Friday. While I never root for anybody to lose their job, I’m glad my company is standing behind what they say.
What’s the most epic way you’ve seen someone quit or be fired?
Trail Baboon 
While I was working for a large CPA firm in the IDS tower in Mpls., the manager of our internal bookkeeping department was caught using the firm’s credit card to pay for his family’s summer vacation and a few other things. He had worked fifteen years for the firm, and was well paid; it made no sense whatsoever to jeopardize his career in this way. He was fired on the spot. I had the dubious responsibility of observing him empty his desk and escorting him to the elevator. Probably one of the worst assignments I ever had.
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I’ve never witnessed a firing. I have set the stage for several but left the denouement to the bosses.
In one instance, my workmate and I were given the assignment to install carpet over padding in the upstairs of a residence. He looked a little unsteady from, apparently, a drinking episode the night before. The job site was close to the shop, so we took over the tackstrip and padding as part of staging the work. I got the guy started on the tackstrip. I made measurements so as to cut the material back at the store.
“I’ll be back in a hour.”
I was back in an hour. He had rolled out the pad on a raised platform and was asleep.
I did not say a word but went to work hammering in the tackstrip nails and stapling the pad. Some of that work was done mere inches from his head and took over noisy hour.
He never woke up until I need his pad mattress.
I jerked it from under him.
“I guess I fell asleep.”
“I guess you did. Go explain it to the boss.”
He left meekly but was steamed once he got to the store. Lots of shouting on his part. Done. Gone.
In another situation, my workmate and I were installing flooring in the basement of a residence. It took several days to accomplish the work. On the morning of the second day, the homeowner came to me and asked whether we had been upstairs.
“No”
“Someone was. I’m missing some pain medication.” She was actually quite calm.
I NEVER go to other areas of a customer’s home without permission. I knew my innocence.
I happened to look in the other guy’s tool bucket and there was the bottle of pills.
“I had a headache.”
“You ARE a headache and a thief. Go explain it to your boss.”
Naturally, my phone call beat him to the store.
“Keep him if you want but never send him with me.”
Not really epic but..
Done. Gone.
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Wow, I am extremely sorry you would support an illegal, deadly experimental vaccine!
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How do you arrive at the conclusion that the vaccine is illegal or deadly? As a retired nurse you should know better.
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Jeanne you are fired from the Trail. There is no need for what you just did.
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Jacque
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It’s one thing to say you don’t agree, jeannejam40, it’s another to come at us with that kind of attitude and blatantly false information.
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Maybe it was sarcasm. It’s often hard to tell.
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I would like to think there was a tongue in a cheek there, but based on past comments by jeannejam40, I’m thinking not.
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One of my colleagues who was impossible to work with and who was extremely narcissistic resigned because she wasn’t allowed to work from home anymore. She lived 70 miles from the office, and stayed with friends Monday and Tuesday nights, driving home late on Wednesday.. This was pre telehealth and she insisted she worked on evaluations when she was at home on Thursday, but really didn’t. She insisted she worked until 8:00 Monday-Thursday nights, so that she could take every Friday off. She essentially had 4 day weekends every week for more than 10 years. The administration was afraid that she would sue if they challenged her. Eventually we had a director who told her she had to work in the office on Thursday. She gave her two week notice, and then started sending nasty and threatening communications to the State HR office in Bismarck. They sent staff to our agency one day when she had a week left, and told her she had 10 minutes to collect her things and they escorted her out of the building and told her to not come back. They boxed up any remaining stuff in her office and sent it to her. I was never so happy. She had tortued me for 15 years.
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My agency went through a period for about a year during which my aforementioned coworker and 4 administrators were escorted out of their offices and told not to return. That was a tough year.
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FYI everyone. I thought long and hard about posting this but it was the firing that was the big question for me. I actually thought about fabricating the context of this gal getting fired but after an hour of thinking about it I couldn’t think of a good situation. As administrator, I will keep an eye on things today. I promise.
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I have actually had to fire someone in my working life. Wayback in the bookstore days. We had a highschooler as well as one of those draconian dress codes that we used to have back then. Jeans of any kind, denim, was not allowed on the work floor. This little gal had been given three warnings including one in writing. Her three strikes. So when she showed up for an evening shift that I was supervising (and in what I have to admit was a very cute outfit with white denim pants), I fired her on the spot. Someone told me later that this gal thought that I would be a softer touch and then I would let her get by with it. Made me glad that I had stuck with policy. After all if it had gotten back to management that I hadn’t done anything about it, then my job would’ve been in jeopardy.
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That girl was asking for it, and you did the right thing.
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In 1989 I was briefly the manager of a vet clinic in Uptown Mpls. The most unsavory part of the job turned out to be when I had to fire a secretary that the vet had decided wasn’t doing her job well enough. He knew, by the way, that he wasn’t easy to work for.
I forget most of the details now. I had to call and tell her she was being let go, and it turned out to be her birthday. I only lasted about 6 months at this job …
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Then there was the secretary who regularly came to work with alcohol on her breath. She disliked me and the other people in my department, and tried to annoy us by off key whistling whenever we walked past her. She was odd, and quit before she was fired.
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You really had some lulus, didn’t you?
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My daughter was hired to be a staff person in a children’s day-care business. Because Molly had prior experience as a day-care staffer, she was hired at a slightly elevated level. Her job description included some managerial requirements that did not apply to some of her co-workers. Included as a specific responsibility was the requirement that she must conduct fire alarm exercises so the kids would know what to do if a fire broke out.
On her first day on the job, Molly asked her supervisor, Anne, about fire drills. Anne said, “We don’t do those. I don’t want to terrify the kids.” Molly replied, “There is no terror if we do this right. And if we don’t train them and a fire happens, that would be frightening.” But Anne flatly refused to conduct the drill. She didn’t believe in them.
Then Anne, as was her habit, left to buy herself a Burger King lunch. Molly conferred with the other staffers. They decided to run a fire alarm drill while Anne was gone. Molly worked with the kids on how to respond to a fire, then she tripped the fire alarm switch.
She didn’t know two things. Tripping the alarm set off an alarm in the local fire department. Those guys suited up, jumped on their fire wagon and roared off to the day-care center with sirens howling. At the same moment, Anne at Burger King got a message on her phone: “Your building is on fire.”
The fire truck arrived with great drama, the firemen jumping out to charge the building with long axes on poles. Anne showed up, swearing like a sailor. The kids, meanwhile, had neatly filed out of the building as Molly had trained them to do. For the kids, this was the most fun they ever had in day care. The chaos ended with Anne firing Molly who was only halfway through her first day on the job.
That night Molly called Anne to discuss her firing. Molly told her, “I don’t think you want the board to know that you have been defying state regulations by not doing fire drills.” Anne relented, and Molly went on to be a model staffer that summer.
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At software etc. I worked very closely with the loss prevention guy so I was party to several firings although I only witnessed one personally. As silly as it sounds. food had been disappearing at a fairly alarming rate from the office refrigerator. Signs were put up, warnings made — didn’t make any difference. So the loss prevention guy put up a camera. I helped him go through three days worth of tape (which was unbelievably boring). We did catch the gal on tape and when we went to check her desk that night after office hours it was clear that she had a problem. The desk was littered with food stuff and wrappers and grease spots. It was a mess. Management decided that if she would get help she could keep her job. The interview was amazing to me. I was there because loss prevention guy needed to have a second person in the room and since I had seen the tapes I was the candidate. Despite having been warned repeatedly that the culprit would lose their position and despite the generous offer by management that she could retain her job if she got help, she admitted that she needed help but didn’t want to get it. That was her last day. Cleaning out her desk after she left was a nightmare. We probably should’ve just burned it.
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I have fired several people, and though it’s generally not a happy experience, it’s usually not traumatic. In most cases there are prior reprimands and warnings that things need to improve, so it doesn’t come as a complete surprise. There have been a couple of instances, though, where that was not the case, and that can get ugly. One of the funnier firings that I had to do was a receptionist with the CPA firm mentioned above. Liz was a bright young woman, but just couldn’t rein in that sharp wit and tongue that has since propelled her to national fame. She would routinely say something completely off the wall to clients visiting the office, and they just didn’t think she was funny. I had to let her go, and no doubt I did her favor when I did.
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When my daughter was about three or four she would lock on to a statement that she would repeat over and over. She was expressing the idea that was foremost on her mind.
For example, a day-care kid named Iver got in trouble for eating a house plant. All day long Molly kept saying, “Iver shouldn’t have eaten the plant.”
Then my former wife, Molly’s mother, was asked to terminate a fellow worker. For two days, almost the only words coming out of Molly’s mouth were, “Kathe FIRED Louise! Kathe FIRED Louise!”
Molly’s obsession confused me until I realized that, in her mind, firing someone involved actual flames.
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Yes, when I was 4 or 5, my dad had a summer job at a meat packing plant. One day he came home (dropping his smelly coveralls at the door in prep to shower). I was so alarmed, and started looking for burns on his skin. The folks must have figured it out pretty quickly and reassured me…
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In the 1990s. experts and thought leaders in the computer industry were so confident of the importance of the Java programming language as to assert that anyone who continued to embrace other development platforms should be excluded from professional advancement. Voices in opposition were shouted down, debate was discouraged, the science was pronounced settled. Billions were spent on converting legacy systems to the Java platform.
Today, Java is widely recognized as an inferior tool. Programming languages given short shrift in the 1990s as obsolete are still in use. What’s obsolete is the massive body of software that was converted to Java at the behest of ‘experts’ whose authority to lead the industry was beyond question.
One of the most important things I have learned as an applied scientist, and not just from witnessing this particular boondoggle, is that believing something is not the same as knowing something.
You apparently believe Covid to be sufficient existential threat that all those who do not share your fear of it should be cast out, purged, regarded as not persons and therefore not entitled to indulgence of their opinions because of what, exactly?
Because you’ve allowed yourself to be convinced that everyone who isn’t as fearful as yourself is an enemy.
May I suggest, in the kindest way possible, that those people are not the problem.
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And may I suggest, in the kindest way possible, that you actually read my post again. My issue is the firing which was based on not following company policy.
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I read it, and I understand what you said. You approve of the company firing someone who isn’t sufficiently afraid of Covid to be vaccinated. Restating that it’s really about ‘company policy’ seems evasive.
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This is the last comment before I shut this down because it’s not what I intended today. If you have a policy and someone breaks the policy they get consequences. That’s my point.
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Hi John,
I DO believe Covid is a sufficient threat. One simply has to look at the number of people dying of it and how easily it’s spread to know that. Not everyone gets as sick as others, but since we don’t know who will and who won’t, I think it’s in all our best interests to try and stop this thing.
I wish it wasn’t so polarizing between the two sides. It always seems to me with a little better ‘communication’ two parties can agree on certain things; even if it’s to agree to disagree without it turning so bitter. But I think the country is past that for the most part.
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John, you offer an intelligent and essentially fair expression of an opinion that I am sure is wrong. It is interesting for me to hear an opinion I find dangerous expressed in such a pleasant way. I cannot endorse your opinion, but I like the way you express it.
But opinions are one thing and conduct is something else. You are absolutely entitled to your opinions. What you are not entitled to is conduct based on those opinions that threatens the public good. The threat of Covid is hardly “existential” when it is killing so many people. People who refuse to be vaccinated are a very specific threat to everyone they have any contact with.
This is a very real issue for me. Through no fault of my own, I was infected with Covid. I fight it every hour of every day, as I turn out to be someone vulnerable to “long Covid.” Dreading Covid is not hysteria; it is recognizing a murderous virus that continues to evolve and adopt new deadly forms.
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Steve, please forgive me if I misunderstand your position, but it sounds like you think your experience and belief system make what you want more important than what other people want. There are a lot of folks who feel that way about a lot of different things, which is why I wrote my reply.
Those who advocated for Java believed so firmly in their mission they were willing to scourge dissenters. They prevailed in spite of being wrong, and harm came about as a consequence. How are you qualified to dictate the nature of ‘the public good’? On the credibility of that which you’ve read online, sentiments shared with others in your tribe? That was exactly what guided my industry, along with a profound lack of humility on the part of its leadership.
What I hear in this thread is people saying that those who disbelieve the doctrine of their tribe should be punished. If we are in fact disturbed by ‘divisiveness’ and ‘hatred’ and ‘intolerance’ and ‘exclusion’ then maybe people ought to be thinking about what they’ve allowed fear to cause them to do.
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Good lord, you think I feel my experience and beliefs should prevail over what others think and believe? Absolutely not. I have tried to live my life with the utmost respect for others.
You might need to check your hearing. You say you hear me and other folks here promoting punishment for their beliefs. I don’t see how you can come to that conclusion. This society, in common with other societies, is enriched by the way different people see things differently. Tolerance for different views is a cherished American tradition.
But that does not mean everyone should be free to engage in conduct that is dangerous to others. I wonder why you feel entitled to hold views that directly contradict the views of people whos life work has been to study these issues. I’ve listened carefully to people with all kinds of notions about the dangers of Covid and the importance of vaccinations. The best judgement I can make is that this is an extremely dangerous virus and right now we have no better way of limiting its lethality than vaccinations. Your experience with Java does not prove otherwise. Of course, experts can be wrong. And they can be right.
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Sir, all I’m doing is holding a mirror. Your statements affirm what I implied. You’ve listened carefully to experts. You’ve made a judgement. Others ‘might’ be sick. Experts ‘might’ be right. There’s nothing to do except compel others to be vaccinated, and punish them if they refuse, because they cannot be allowed to engage in conduct ‘dangerous to others’. Others shall conform to your rules in order for you to feel safe. What liberties will remain when you get done telling everyone else what they have to do so you can stop worrying about something that may never affect you again?
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John, when people choose to live in groups, they do not retain total freedom of action. Living in close proximity to other people obliges me to behave in ways that are not likely to harm others. I probably should not fire guns in my front yard. I probably should shovel snow and ice off my sidewalk. I probably should maintain my home in ways that make it unlikely it will catch on fire. I probably should follow expert advice on limiting how much disease I transmit to others.
My grandson is at an age where he does not have the option of being vaccinated. People like you who believe vaccinations are a hoax and so do not get vaccinated are a threat to his well being. Some children exposed to this virus die and others have a rough time in the hospital. I don’t want to “punish” anyone for their beliefs. I do want to limit the freedom of you or anyone else to further spread this disease I fight each hour. We all owe that much to each other.
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Seriously, John, why are you on this thread? You have done nothing on this thread but agitate for a discussion that has nothing to do with vs’ intention for the day. Several of us have pointed this out to you, yet you persist. Exactly what are you trying to accomplish?
I honestly don’t care what your opinion is about Java, Covid, vaccines in general, or anything else for that matter. There’s plenty of room for disagreement about all kinds of things, and, as “they” say, opinions are like a..holes, everyone has one. I’m just curious as to what your agenda might be. Why are you here? Lest you go off on another tangent, please note that I’m not questioning your right to be here, just your motive.
All that said, I’ve perused your blog site on WordPress and see that you’re a writer. Can’t claim to have read any of your books, but I do love the book covers.
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I did see that on your Facebook page, John, you note that you are 71, which means you are at significant risk for hospitalization if you contract COVID-19, and that your hospitalization would be paid by Medicare. Since Steve has experience with this, perhaps you could ask him what his hospitalization cost. Medicare strongly encourages preventive care to avoid expensive hospital stays. I think you should pledge to not seek hospital care if you become sick, or if you do, that you should pay for your own stay. It’s not fair for others to be on the hook for your care if you refuse a vaccine against all medical advice, a vaccine that could save tens of thousands of dollars.
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“You apparently believe Covid to be sufficient existential threat that all those who do not share your fear of it should be cast out, purged, regarded as not persons and therefore not entitled to indulgence of their opinions because of what, exactly?”
Kindly tell me how you arrived at that conclusion, John. I agree with Ben that the virus is sufficiently dangerous that it behooves us to take whatever precautions we can to avoid contracting. That is not fear, that is just common sense. What I was objecting to in Jeanne’s comment above is her contention that the vaccine is illegal, deadly and experimental; it is none of those things. Talk about fearmongering.
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Answering more than one challenge here, so bear with me. V expressed approval of her employer doing what he said he’d do. That act was to fire a co-worker for refusing to be vaccinated. Therefore, V approves of firing someone for not being vaccinated.
I am on this thread because the proposition advocates a behavior that is overbearing, cowardly and cruel. I cite the influence of fear because it’s the least onerous sin I can think of to explain why people would imagine themselves entitled to compel others to submit to having a substance injected into their bodies by an agency they don’t trust.
By the way, I do not think that Covid or the vaccine are hoaxes. I am vaccinated. My objections are a matter of principle. The story of Java apparently shot right over the heads of a few readers. Fine; I will dispense with allegory.
If you are bound and determined to coerce your neighbors into capitulating to your demands over a disease you ‘might’ contract, from which you ‘might’ die, on account of they ‘might’ get the disease themselves and transmit it to you, then call it what it is. Getting fired from a job is punishment. Masking your intentions with a call to civic duty does not change what you’re doing. Although it’s difficult to know what to believe in this setting, it appears that Covid is within bounds in terms of virulence in comparison to the flu, if not less so.
It has been reported that being vaccinated does not prevent a person from carrying the pathogen. It has been reported that fatality is mostly confined to persons with weak immune systems, in a population segment that is statistically poised to die from whatever they catch next, whether Covid or something else. Young people are reportedly at little risk of complications from the disease.
Finally, the disease is treatable. So, what’s all the fuss about? Well, apparently, we have a lot of people in this country who think that other people need to bend over backwards so they can worrying about themselves. It’s that petty.
Oh, but doctors say ….
Yeah, doctors and nurses are opting out in droves, quitting their jobs because they don’t trust the system either. Hardly anyone these days remembers Thalidomide, a ‘safe’ palliative for nausea during pregnancy, that caused birth defects by the thousands. Every medication has the potential to be a poison. It’s not the responsibility of those who wish not to participate in a massive drug trial to pander to the insecurities of those who can’t a grip on the notion that sometimes you have to be a grown-up and face life’s challenges on your own merits.
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OK I just saw this one so despite telling myself I was going to stop this I’m not gonna stop.
I did not say that I approved of my boss firing someone because she was not vaccinated. I approved of my company terminating someone who broke a rule that said if you are not vaccinated when you are in the building wear a mask. She came to the building with her coworkers repeatedly over the summer and did not mask. There were consequences to her choice. I know it’s difficult for all of us, myself included, to drop our filters when we are engaging in the world. But I hope you would try and read my piece again.
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And you know what, I’d even go so far as to agree she asked for it. There.
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Let’s try this. At the beginning of WWII, Japanese Americans were rounded up and put in camps for the duration of the war. Persons of Italian and German heritage were not. I suspect we can all agree this was a bad thing.
The qualities that made Japanese Americans vulnerable to this treatment were a combination of their appearance and the stress induced by war conditions. Imagine I’m the white guy telling everyone in a town meeting who wants to send the Nisei off to camps, “You’re not thinking straight.”
I’m hearing, “No, YOU’RE not thinking straight”.
That’s what this is. Those who approve of punitive measures against people who rebel against masks and mandates are allowing fear to spin their moral compasses in the wrong direction. There is a cultural divide, intuitively understood, that allows the ‘whites’ in the room to say, “They’re not us, therefore it doesn’t matter what we do to them”.
Americans were afraid the Nisei would forget they were Americans and slit everyone’s throats in the middle of the night. What they failed to recognize was an obligation to take that chance – and here’s the important part – EVEN IF THAT FEAR WAS JUSTIFIED.
I hear people say, “It’s just a jab in the arm. It doesn’t hurt anybody.”
You don’t know that. The only thing you know is that it doesn’t hurt you. When you make that decision for others, you’re in a zone where you can see only yourself, where the fears and concerns of those others become so insignificant they might as well not be people.
The Nisei accepted more than their share of the risk by submitting. It could have turned out much worse for them. The story is often cited as symbolic of dignity, but that judgement sets aside what happened to the Jews. I’m not saying they should have fought, but if I’d been in their shoes, I would have considered it.
None of this is to assert there cannot be events calling for harsh dismissal of civil rights, a descent into internecine warfare, a mad scramble for survival. If you think that’s where we are today, then you have truly left the room. I’m vaccinated, I wear a mask when it makes sense, but I’m also willing to take my share of the risk rather than callously dismiss another tribe’s fears that this might not turn out well for them.
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You say that we are not hearing you but I would charge that you are not hearing us the issue was getting fired for breaking policy. The issue was not what the policy was. And by the way I meant to do this several months ago but it fell off of my radar but illusion of gravity is on its way to me right now I am looking forward to reading it as I love science-fiction and fantasy ciao
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Thank you for buying my book. It means a lot to me, and I regret you’re unhappy with my response to your post. If your group did not appear to my eye as fundamentally decent in nature, I would not have bothered to speak to them. I’m saddened to witness what your employer did. I’m not convinced you’ve washed your hands of it by alluding to an innocuous policy. At the very least, it’s an act of acquiescence, and I’m not one to be silent in the face of what I understand to be an unnecessary and uncharitable act.
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Let’s try this. It’s 3:30 AM and you are the only car on the street and there’s a red light. You choose to run the red light because you don’t see any risk to yourself or anyone else. There’s a camera at the intersection that catches you doing this and you get a fine. You go to court and argue the fine and get a bigger fine? No,
most people just pay the fine.
Let’s try one more. There’s a dress code at your office where are you serve the public. You break the dress code repeatedly despite the fact that a dress code reminder and warning is given every week. When you get fired for blatantly disregarding the policy of your company, do you whine about it? Probably. Can you find an attorney who would be willing to take your case to sue the company? Probably not.
My piece was and still is about consequences. If you make a decision to break rules/laws and go against policy, then there will be consequences.
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Your argument turns on rules that are reasonable. If you argue that firing someone because they disobeyed an unreasonable rule is still beyond reproach, then I don’t have anything to say about it.
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Let me tell you about my filters. I work in the service industry. It is extremely common to have my clients make rules about their programs. Rules such as you can’t bring your children on this program, the company will not pay extra for you to sit in first class, you have to pay your own luggage fees. Extremely innocuous and basically arbitrary. And time after time after time clients back down in the face of participants who feel more entitled.It’s my job to make those things happen and I do it. Although it’s always a little disappointing and I can tell you after 35 years that it makes all of the people who want more than they have been given to expect even more.
So I have tried to live my life keeping in mind that choices have consequences. I worked hard on that when I was a single mother and my daughter was young, threatening very few punishments because I knew I’d have to carry through on them. I welcome you to this community, John and I hope that you are here long enough to get to know me and know that when I say my piece was about the consequences that is the truth. I don’t have anything against this person, although I didn’t know her personally. But I do think that companies and communities and people have the right to make rules and policies and when you go to work for a company or you join a community or you make a friend, you have to live within the constraints of those policies and rules and values and beliefs. And if you don’t want to, for whatever reason, that’s your choice. But you have to be willing to live with the consequences.
Thank you for being willing to engage civilly about this disagreement. That’s one of our most important values on the Trail.
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The opinion that vaccines are “illegal, deadly experimental” ignores pertinent information thereby becoming disinformation.
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I’m just about to replace today’s post with a picture of puppies and kitties. And it’s 9:30 in the morning and I’m already beating myself for having posted this in the first place.
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No need to beat yourself up over posting this, vs, we can handle differences of opinion. I do think it’s interesting that neither Jeanne nor John seem to have understood that today’s topic isn’t about Covid or the vaccine, apparently they both want it to be.
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VS, it will be fine. We have all been living with this for a. long time and tensions are bound to be present. This discussion is a reflection of that, and that is all. People can interpret what you wrote through their own fliters.
I am ok with the way John expressed his opinion, although I disagree. I am not ok with Jeanne entering the discussion, throwing a verbal grenade, then disappearing to watch the explosion.
This will pass and we will all move on.
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Sherrilee, this is one of the best discussions we’ve had in months. Don’t regret that.
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I was fired once, losing my job at the U of Minnesota. The U is an orderly, fair employer most of the time. Getting fired was an interesting experience. I was fired because my boss lied by telling her supervisor that I had lied when applying for this job. I’m fairly confident that I could have beaten this, but I chose to not defend myself. My reward for successfully fighting back would have been continued employment under the boss from hell, and that was unthinkable.
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I have never been fired but being furloughed felt a little bit like that. Despite the fact that I wasn’t unhappy with the time I was furloughed (more or less) and I’m still enjoying part time, the fact that I was on the list to get furloughed still stings a little.
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You are “expensive” to the company–you know. Ageism. The fact that you probably get more done in a half hour than anyone else, gets lost in the accountant’s balance sheet. However, 6 months after you leave it will show up on the “lack of income” side of the balance sheet.
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I suspect they also realize that you intend to retire in the foreseeable future, vs, they were hedging their bets; I wouldn’t take it personally. Loyalty is a rare thing in employment these days, from either side.
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They’d be fools if they’re not thinking about me retiring soon. I just got back from a meeting of my peers that was an in-person requirement. This is a once a month meeting, But the first time we met in person for a year and a half. If it’s a fireable offense to have a thought bubble over your head saying “I’m surrounded by idiots” then I’ll be out of a job later today.
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I fired someone once, and I did it in the manner Garrison Keillor talked about in his book ‘WLT’ “Soon as their butt hits the chair”. He wrote something about how no matter how many warnings they get, they’ll never see it coming. So tell them soon as they sit down.
Then just talk whatever for a few minutes while that sinks in because they’re not listening. Then let them get mad and call you whatever names makes them feel better, and let them leave with some dignity.
So that was my approach.
Actually, i guess I fired one person, and dismissed someone else who was a volunteer in a pretty high level position.
I was fired once. But it was twisted in such a way, and worded so strategically that I thought it was my idea all along. I was too young to get what was happening. Consequently, I still like that person.
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I was fired as a husband last night. And will be for the foreseeable future. And in the midst of all she and I are going through I have to listen to stupidity enshrined. If I could I would post two cats and a puppy. If I had the time I would find and post John Adams words on the great danger of democracy. Because . . .
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You’ve probably just been furloughed, Clyde. Try to keep in mind that Sandy’s behavior is the result of a diseased brain. She is not in full control of her faculties, and she’s emotionally upset that her world is spinning out of control at the moment. I know this is a really tough situation for you to be in, and it’s hard not to take it personally when her anger is directed at you. My dad died from lung cancer that had metastasized to his brain, and he was angry and hateful to everyone toward the end. I had to keep reminding myself, it’s the diseased brain speaking.
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Mom is having issues over in her new room at Long Term Care. They make decisions without asking her and that doesn’t sit well. She makes phone calls. A couple weeks ago they did an incontinence study and then, without telling her, put a schedule in her bathroom and in the middle of the night, some aide told her it wasn’t her time to go to the bathroom. “What do you mean ‘It’s not my time!’ “. Mom made a call. The schedule has been taken down and she can go to the bathroom whenever she wants.
Then they changed her shower time “Without even asking me!” She made a call. Shower time was restored and they apologized for changing and not asking.
I know she’s kinda particular, and there has to be some give and take. But she’s given up a lot moving over there and she’s trying her best to accept it through all the rigamarole involved. But they really do need to talk with her about this stuff and not just assume she won’t care or fuss about it. So many clients are non verbal or non-ambulatory… they just do what they want with them. And that’s not the way it should be done.
So many of the staff are really good and Mom does compliment them and I heard her telling one that mom appreciated them. But communication seems to be a problem. Midnight tonight her isolation is over. She’s survived that. Even though she got out for lunch one day because someone didn’t know that. And even though someone this morning wasn’t sure when she was done. Mom knows; they better listen or she’ll be making phone calls!
I love my mom! She’s teaching us all so much!
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I love your mom, too, Ben. Feisty little lady. (Well heck, I don’t know if she’s little or not.)
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It seems to be the policy at a lot of senior living places to make up schedules that serve the needs of the staff, and then wait to see if anyone complains.
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One of my favorite movies is People Will Talk with Cary Grant and Jeanne Crain. In the beginning of the movie while they’re setting up the characters the Cary Grant character, who is a doctor who has set up his own clinic, admonishes the head nurse and the kitchen staff that patients shouldn’t be woken up to eat or to have to take a bath or take medication’s. He says that one of the reasons he started the clinic was his belief that patients are not prisoners..
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I meant I will be fired every evening when she sundowns
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Clyde, my dad went through the exact same experience in the nearly seven years he took care of his wife at home. She was seriously ill, obviously debilitated by some seizures that affected her brain. Her best friend in the world was her husband, but she would turn on him and say terrible things.
But, of course, the person he loved for over six decades was not the person saying terrible things. She had changed. As PJ correctly points out, “it’s the diseased mind speaking.”
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Twice in the 30+ years I have worked at my company, someone being fired has resulted in having police protection afterwards. Once was close to 25 years ago; The firee was a tech guy who had installed some software so that he could track what a woman that he was obsessed with was doing. After he lost his job, he stalked around the tech building every day for about three days and the tech building had police coverage during that time and for a couple of days afterwards. The second one was a guy who was in a temporary job and when he got let go )do more to numbers than anything on his own), he completely lost it. I was in the building when it happened and it was loud and it was a little frightening. He was up on a desk and he was yelling and cursing. Then a couple of folks urged him out of the building and then he got on top of his supervisors car and stomped around and yelled and cursed some more. This resulted in the police taking him away and a few days of police coverage in my building. Which is a little nerve-racking.
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This is a one I wanted to post
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Well, they’re both fun!
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I read the heading a couple times and didn’t get it. Now suddenly it dawns on me! Very cleaver!
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Snort!
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I have not ever been fired, but on two occasions it was on its way and I quit first. The first time was a very PT job as an inventory clerk. I was the world’s worst clerk due to learning disability. I quit out of frustration but only before the guy was going to fire me for messing up his inventory.
The second time was as a therapist after a management change. The new management was not too cleaver. I was looking for a job already because it was crystal clear this was not going to work, and as I did so, found my job listed in the help wanted ads. This was the only time ever in my life I quit on the spot without another job lined up. I did give them two weeks. This was at a Chemical Dependency program. It happened a few times there that the CD counselors started drinking, probably due to the stress of the job, and arrived back at work from lunch having imbibed. Those poor folks got walked out of the building. Lots of drama there. Lots of drama. Given those other quits and firings, mine hardly showed up on anyone’s radar.
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Thinking back on the people I’ve fired, the hardest one was a legal secretary at the law firm. I think I have written about it on the trail before.
I was the one who hired her based on her excellent skills, pleasant personality, and past experience. At the time, I took her at her word that her crutches and the cast on her leg during the interview were the result of a skiing accident. During the ensuing year, I became increasingly suspicious that she was in an abusive marriage.
A couple of months into her employment she sustained a broken arm falling down some stairs at home. She returned from a weekend trip up north with a black eye; they had hit a bear with their truck. At work she was always very sweet and pleasant, and her desk was a miniature shrine to her family with photos of her two grade school kids, and her handsome husband. Flowers, love poems, and hearts everywhere. But as her list of injuries became longer and her mishaps more frequent, I had this sinking feeling in my gut that something was wrong.
I don’t recall what injury finally convinced me to talk with her about the situation. I asked her to come to my office so we could talk. It took a little prodding, but she finally admitted that yes, her husband beat her. She was scared of him, and didn’t know where to turn for help.
Our firm had an excellent employee assistance program, so I was able to get her in to see a counselor that afternoon. Arrangements were made to move her and her kids to a temporary shelter; she got a restraining order against her husband, and pressed charges against him for assault. Three weeks later she relented, dropped the restraining order and charges against him, and moved back home. The two young attorneys she worked for had supported her throughout this ordeal, but the chaos in her life was spilling into theirs. When she chose to return home and drop the charges, we had to make the tough decision to let her go. We didn’t believe or trust, as she did, that things would change. I have no idea what happened to her after that, but it weighed on my mind for a long time.
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So sad.
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Very sad, but also, not that unusual.
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I was working on a new apartment 12 plex in Wahpeton, ND. 3 floors.
I got a newer guy as help.
The install was carpet over padding.
So it took the guy (I’ll call Dean) to the third floor and selected a unit with three bedrooms.
I cut in the tackstrip (Tackstrip is the wooden lathe with sharp needle-like metal things that is secured by small nails) and hammered in the nails. With experience, one strike is all that is needed to set the nails. I demonstrated and explained the procedure and said directly that it was possible that hitting the base was a possibility but with practice things would go well.
I went to the second floor directly below Dean’s work.
I heard, “Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Pause.
There are nails every 4 inches in tackstrip. A length is 4 feet. Do the math.
My trained ear told me to go up to Dean.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m nailing in the tackstrip ”
“You are but not like I showed you.”
“Yes, I am!”
“No, you’re not! I can hear what you’re doing.”
I Tap, Tap, Tap, Tap, Tap, Tapped in a nail.
“Hit the nail!”
“Okay”
I returned to the second floor and heard Tap, Tap, Tap, Tap Tap. Okay.
“Dean, you’re not doing what I told you.”
“Yes, I am”
“No, you’re not!”
So I finished up nailing in the rest of the room.
Audience: Is this the end? No.
The tackstrip having been installed in all three bedrooms, it was time for a padding lesson. I rolled out, fitted, and stapled in two bedrooms. Dean understood.
Me below him. I hear…smack. pause. Smack. Pause. Smack. Pause. Smack. Pause.
Staples for padding are usually placed 3 plus or minus inches apart.
I went upstairs.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m putting in the pad.”
“Not like I showed you.”
“Yes, I am!”
“No! My ear tells me you’re not!”
I repeated the whole process again and set Dean up with more work. Same result.
I never expect people to perform more quickly or expeditiously than me but this guy I judged as untrainable. He would not listen and contradicted me repeatedly.
“Go talk to your boss”
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Re: the discussion about vaccines above – Thanks for staying civil. I can see we aren’t going to change any minds here, but it is interesting to see, a little, where we’re coming from.
I wish I could have some kind of crystal ball, to follow each person’s train of thought/belief – clear back to the first time we each heard about this Covid – the one time perhaps that we all heard the same information – and see when the thoughts/beliefs began to diverge.
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Here’s my beginning timeline.
December 15, 2019 heard about c19.
February 20, 2020 heard about Washington state infections.
February 26, 2020. Trump 15 to 0
May 1, 2020. Accepted into the Pfizer trial knowing that success would be a plus for Trump.
That was a tough decision as I despise XXXpresident Donny.
Jumping way ahead, I have had the Pfizer booster with zero reactions. I’m still alive. I have not been magnetized. My testicles are intact. I have not grown gills. Vaccines work. They are not infallible but they work.
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And you’re sure you don’t have any micro-chips embedded?
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I no longer have to pay for wi-fi. Reception is best as I take a shower.
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I keep telling you: the chip was in the bandaids!
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My bandaids after blood draws were Loony Tune characters. True story.
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Belatedly : a birdie told me to look at this post. I’ll say nothing about John; it wouldn’t have been civil.
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