Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Job Security

Recently there have been a couple of stories in the local news (one, at least, made national news) where someone thought their job was in jeopardy so they took, what they thought, was appropriate measures to "keep" their job?

One is the NASA, hostage/murder/suicide situation from last week. Some man thought he was about to be fired because he'd gotten negative performance feedback. His solution was to take someone hostage - kill them, then kill himself. He took a second hostage, as backup, but just "tied" her up with duct tape. As far as career planning, not his best move. And committing suicide gives new meaning to "dead-end job", don't you think?

Then, a few weeks ago, there was a major story about an office building fire. Someone from the freeway saw flames INSIDE the building, through the windows. They pulled over to check it out and sounded the alarms (which hadn't gone off - it was an old building) and called 9-1-1. Three people (possibly more...they were having difficulty going back into the building because the structure was so badly damaged in the fire...and I never heard if there was a change in the death count) died. A firefighter was injured and hospitalized. They covered the story for days because the investigators were having problems (the structure damage thing) determining the cause of the fire. Finally someone came forward saying that she was expected to turn in a report that she hadn't prepared yet so she thought if she caused a fire in her office (guess she didn't know it would spread?), it would buy her some time. She's since been arrested on murder charges. Murder charges! But hey, at least she'll have plenty of free time to work on that report now. And who knows, maybe they'll hold her job until she's released. (yeah right!)

So I'm wondering, how far would you go to to keep your job? Inquiring minds want to know.

3 comments:

KimAmburn said...

Oh my God. No job is that important. What were those people thinking?

Chris Peters said...

Good God! Setting a fire for that reason? That's something a 5-year old might do because they haven't learned yet to reason things out. I don't understand what makes people think so wrongly.

Aura said...

OMG. That's insanity! I'd never go that far. If you're going to get fired, find another job! If you're not done with a project, ask for more time. What were these people thinking? :(