And Maureen, I should point out that the only reason I haven’t given you a royal round of “attagirls” is that most other folks have. You did not only the right thing, but a difficult thing. I wish more people would stand up for what they believe in.
Maureen, you absolutely should’ve stuck your nose into things. You’re a manager: managers get paid the big bucks to deal with problems. The file clerk doesn’t get paid the big bucks to deal with these things. And he definitely isn’t getting paid to learn a life lesson.
Daniel
Sh, no. I don’t require all my hangers on to worship at my feet. You could always offer me a Mercedes for oral sex…
Done. The offer that is. You’ll get the Benz right after that other part.
“Benz”? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?
That is true as far as it goes, but you can be charged with attempted bank robbery. From what I recall from my criminal law class long ago, attempt is when a person with intent to commit a crime takes an action toward committing the crime. By intending to rob the bank and starting to drive there, you’ve completed the crime of attempted bank robbery, even though outside circumstances thwarted you before you could complete the bank robbery.
Here we had what seems to be an attempted misappropriation of the boom box. Joan took the box and put it under her desk with the intent to coerce Elliot into trading it to her, and then announced her intent to the other employees. Maureen (Joan’s supervisor) heard what was going on and took the box directly to Elliot, thwarting the attempted conversion.
Joan sought to do something over the line and was thwarted before she could. If this was where it had stopped, the situation was probably ambiguous enough that there would have been little cause for most people to make a formal report over it. There was always the possibility that Joan could have given Elliot the box without an offer, or have offered to swap in a non-coercive way.
However, what makes this egregious is that after she was thwarted, she exploded that “her” box had been taken, an unmistakable admission that she believed that she had already acquired the box, not that she was holding it for a potential trade. That, combined with her reaction with Maureen’s boss was simply unacceptable.
Ouch! That hurts!
I don’t think I care to do that. It’s fine by me if you all disagree. I stand by everything I said. Of course Joan was unethical and a bitch. I simpathise with Elliot and, again, I think Maureen deserves praise for helping him keep his boombox. Try to understand that I repudiate in the strongest terms possible Joan’s behaviour. Nothing I said so far indicates otherwise. Moving on…
I just expressed an opinion about how I think the situation could have been handled better by Maureen. That’s my only point of contention, if you want to call it that.
That’s a little unfair. By all means, if you think he’s spouting bullshit, tell him so. But i think this board benefits from having more voices, not fewer, and that asking people not to participate in the conversation just because you don’t like what they say is counterproductive.
He shouldn’t have, and that’s exactly when it would have been appropriate to intervene on his behalf.
According to the OP, Joan didn’t state her intentions, it was Maureen’s conjecture.
Her conjecture was true. It doesn’t change the validity of my argument, because of what you said.
If I found out that my coworker had, unasked, snuck the raffle prize I’d won from under another coworker’s desk, and that the thieving coworker had subsequently launched a huge hissy-fit at her; well, that’d make me kind of uncomfortable.
If, however, I found out that my coworkers had known about the theft, had had ample opportunity to reclaim my stuff without confrontation and give it back to me, but did nothing, leaving me to deal with the coworker’s hissy-fit myself, I’d be even more uncomfortable.
No Pedro, the OP was told by somone Joan had DIRECTLY told her plans to. So yes, she knew Joan’s stated intentions via a reliable witness.
That’s not proof of anything. She could have wanted to make a surprise, or just usually write really curt notes.
Thanks, I appreciate that you understood what I meant. If it were me I’d rather not take the boombox before any inappropriate behaviour has occured but your points are well taken.
:rolleyes: Way to jump to conlcusions there. I was pointing out to Pedro that his line of argument is a dead end.
Where does it say that? If that’s the case I withdraw my objections and apologize for the misunderstanding.
Something like that did happen to a poster here. Christmas before last, I think it was. He (I’m pretty sure it was a he) was at the Christmas party, but had to leave to work third shift. In his absence, the raffle drawing took place, and he won $500(?).
A co-worker claimed it. Not on his behalf; he claimed it outright. Even though the guy who won had no choice in not being there for the drawing. But it was all good, because the co-worker spent some of the money on a painting for our fellow Doper. What a saint! :smack:
IIRC, the Doper was reluctant to pursue this, because he feared the rest of the staff would think he was having a hissy-fit. At the time, I wasn’t sure, but if the co-worker was clear about his intention to keep the money rather than pass it on to the winner, and the others didn’t question this, then yeah, they probably would have.
That was Joan’s justification to my coworker. She only got a “lousy $20 gift card to Best Buy,” and Elliott, a kid who already had a boombox, got another one “he didn’t need.” It was not something I made up out of the blue. Really. And, she relayed that she would “take it upstairs for him” to his supervisor. Not to me.
Maureen, you handled this situation well. As I’ve said, I think that Joan needs to be out the door. I have no doubt that you do your job well and have earned your position of authority in the workplace.
Mentally ill people never have the “exact same disability.” Just as there are different kinds of cancer that affect different parts of the body and different individuals react in different ways, so it is with mental illness. Different people have different kinds of clinical depression. And within those different kinds of clinical depression, different people respond to different kinds of medication in different combinations at different levels for different periods of time. It is not just a matter of who “accepts” it and who doesn’t.
If people take fewer medications, maybe it’s because their mental illness is not as severe. That’s just one hypothesis.
It’s not like we choose to be mentally ill.
Those of us who have been hospitalized have been given some training in appropriate behaviors – assertiveness as opposed to aggressiveness, non-manipulative behaviors, etc. So we are expected to be responsible, as best we can, for our behaviors. But that varies a lot from individual to individual.
So while I can understand suspending her or firing her and I can understand not liking her or her actions, and I can understand anyone who sees her as an asshole, I can’t quite get my mind around why people expect her to be able to control the symptoms of her illness by having a better attitude when the organ in the body which controls attitude adjustment is what is 'broken."
No, no, Zoe. I’m so sorry for the misunderstanding. When I said “the same disability,” I meant, I have seen people who share the same disability (as in, both people have lost a limb, or both people suffer from the same mental disorder) yet handle it differently.
I didn’t realise that was something Joan actually said and that your coworker relayed to you. I shouldn’t be too surprised about it after reading about the other meltdowns. I’m sorry I misinterpreted your OP. That makes a lot more sense.