# I pit my insane/incredibly stupid employee **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 31, 2011, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-insane-incredibly-stupid-employee/607987 "2011-12-31T22:49:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![PunditLisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-insane-incredibly-stupid-employee/607987/261 "2013-03-21T12:26:45Z")
What a shame. I hope she can find her way back to sobriety before she kills herself. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-insane-incredibly-stupid-employee/607987/262 "2013-03-21T14:20:02Z")
> [@Rick](#): > > The technical term for this is: > Ridden hard and put away wet. > More than once I might add. I’ve always heard it as “rode hard and put away wet”. Also heard it as “she looks like ten miles of bad road”. ---
**Author:** ![Mtgman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@Mtgman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mtgman)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-insane-incredibly-stupid-employee/607987/263 "2013-03-21T17:06:46Z")
> [@fisha](#): > > I know I’ve made fun of her, she made her own bed, she certainly did me no favors at the end. > > But yeah, sometimes I feel the same way. I still hope she gets her shit together. My brother-in-law lost over a decade to meth addiction. He’s been clean, as far as we know, for about two years now and he’s just starting to get on his own two feet. It’s a hell of a drug. He’s alienated a lot of people, and it took essentially bankrupting his mother(who continually bailed him out of jail and otherwise enabled him) and driving his sister(s) to the point where they told him “Do NOT call me from jail again. I will NOT help you. Don’t waste your phone call. If you want to get clean, call me from a non-jail location and we’ll help you, but don’t call us at 2AM talking about how the ‘fucking pigs’ are persecuting your strung out ass.” Now that he’s clean he’s starting to be someone we can associate with and even allow in the house and to have contact with his nieces and nephews. But for a number of years the only time they saw him was when they had been sitting in a car outside some jail waiting on him to be released so he could go back to his enabler’s house. My Mother-in-Law would need a ride(he burned through both of her vehicles with abuse and neglect) to go get her baby out of jail and my wife would oblige. Once he was in the car my M-i-L would scream abuse at him during the drive back and the kids and my wife would have to put up with it. Finally, after one such episode had them sitting in a parking lot for seven hours, my wife and I agreed that was the end. We weren’t putting up with it anymore and we weren’t subjecting the kids to it anymore. The next time he called her from jail at 2AM, after she told him not to, she had a rough time. But she hung up on him. For the next solid hour I held her while she cried and asked if she had done the right thing over and over. This was probably eight years into his addiction, and it took pretty much everyone in his life taking the stand she did to make him realize he had to change. It was about two years later, when he had bankrupted his mother, and she had expended all her goodwill with her family and friends on bailing him out(him stealing the money to pay the property taxes on his grandmother’s house and nearly getting her evicted was the straw that broke most of the camels’ backs) that he had to sit out the entire length of his jail sentence. He spent about six months in jail, while his mother alternately cried and raged at him, her, everyone who wouldn’t help him anymore, etc. After he had to actually serve an entire sentence(his prior record was about two weeks before momma would bail her baby out) he finally seemed to have hit rock bottom and got clean. After a year of being clean we started investing in him emotionally and as a family again. He came to Thanksgiving dinner at our house and my wife drove him around apartment and job hunting. These days he’s got a job and a crappy old truck that gets him to and from work and he’s finally(at thirty years of age) growing up. We’re proud of him, but we told him we still have to continue to see the progress in keeping his addiction at bay. Every day is a struggle, we know that, and as long as he stays clean we’re happy to be in contact with him, but if he falls off the wagon we won’t allow him to drag us down with him like his mother did. He seems to understand and appreciate that. He’s very open about what his addiction has cost him and the affect it has had on his life. He was married to another meth head and they both got clean together, but then she decided she didn’t want to be with him anymore. She may have fallen off the wagon at this point. He wasn’t much of a husband to her, but it really broke his heart when she rejected him right at the time he felt he was getting clean and deserved a chance at having a relationship which wasn’t tainted with addiction. He still hangs out with some of the same friends he had when he was using and we worry he may slip back into old habits, but he seems to be doing well so far. He still smokes tobacco(and pot), and he drinks too much, but at this point we’re fighting one addiction at a time. It’s entirely possible we’ll lose his mother this year to her own addiction(tobacco) and at least he’s been clean long enough to spend some time with her and start to repair some of the damage he caused before she passes. In summary, don’t do meth. Enjoy, Steven ---
**Author:** ![Ms.Pumpkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a87d85/32.png) [@Ms.Pumpkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms.Pumpkin)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-insane-incredibly-stupid-employee/607987/264 "2013-03-21T18:56:17Z")
She looks _exactly_ like a former co-worker of mine who was a “recovered” meth addict. ---
**Author:** ![Zakalwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zakalwe/32/270_2.png) [@Zakalwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zakalwe)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-insane-incredibly-stupid-employee/607987/265 "2013-03-21T20:02:32Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > I’ve always heard it as “rode hard and put away wet”. Also heard it as “she looks like ten miles of bad road”. “Rode hard and put up wet.” Not away. Around here you can just say “put up wet” and everyone knows what you mean. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2013, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-insane-incredibly-stupid-employee/607987/266 "2013-12-19T06:59:26Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > That’s not cool at all. People’s decisions in love and personal life are no fucking business of The Business and firing people for such things is not cool. I’d hate to have to defend that kind of decision in a wrongful termination suit. Bringing up an old thread: If an employee’s SO is putting other employees in danger, that employee has to either get rid of them, or go. I’ve been in environments like this more than once. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2013, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-insane-incredibly-stupid-employee/607987/267 "2013-12-19T07:06:38Z")
> [@fisha](#): > > [Imgur: The magic of the Internet](http://imgur.com/b9SyLto) > > Guess how old she is? > > This was the mug shot from the 3rd domestic. Ex sent it to me. > > Last time I talked to him, it was in December, the day before the sheriff’s sale for their foreclosure on the farm. Wow. She looks like the “Egg Lady” from “Pink Flamingos”. Warning: Do not Google either quoted term on a work computer. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2013, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-insane-incredibly-stupid-employee/607987/268 "2013-12-19T14:37:07Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > Bringing up an old thread: If an employee’s SO is putting other employees in danger, that employee has to either get rid of them, or go. I’ve been in environments like this more than once. Replying to something two years old and where I was pretty much wrong in this specific case. Awesome. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-my-insane-incredibly-stupid-employee/607987.md?page=13)