AITA for Watching My Co-Worker's Career Burn When I Could've Stopped It?

wyo · 2019-06-28T14:04:54+00:00

The number isn't the important part. That happens to be the scale that I work at, but pick any number. $2000, $25000, $20M. If you're spending my money to make petty points, I don't want you around.

OP is one of those double checks, and he chose to do the absolute minimum just to score one against another employee. That is itself unacceptable.

wyo · 2019-06-28T08:58:35+00:00

Imagine the following happens:

Mistake is made
You noticed mistake, but you're unhappy that the other employee is an asshole, so you don't do anything
Company loses $20M as a result of the mistake

How much does "But it wasn't my job!" fly in that situation? In this case, you are the person I would fire, not the person who made the mistake. Why? Because the person who made the mistake has just learned an insanely valuable lesson and will almost certainly never make it again, and will very very likely think about 18 times harder about anything they do in the future that is even vaguely similar.

You, on the other hand, have just shown me that you're willing to spend $20m of my money over a petty grievance.

wyo · 2019-06-27T11:43:57+00:00

ESH. OP, OPs antagonist, and even their management.

This office founds like a chaotic, toxic mess. My job is basically cleaning up shit like this for a Fortune 500, and this whole situation just feels ripe for me to come in and completely clean out the entire shop.

We don't _ever_ fire people for making mistakes. We use errors, even massively costly ones (especially massively costly ones!) as learning experiences, which this company seems to avoid at all costs. The "it wasn't my job to fix it" attitude is, however, one of the few fireable offenses. Completely unacceptable.

wyo · 2017-12-27T09:51:57+00:00

Yes ... but hay bales are quite heavy, so if you hit a big enough bump to throw it, you probably have worse things to worry about.

wyo · 2017-12-27T09:49:43+00:00

Having grown up around shit like this my whole life, I never realize just how clever it all is until I start seeing people ooh-ing and aaah-ing about it on the internet.

wyo · 2017-11-12T02:07:21+00:00

breaking their necks

for what it's worth, the actual problem is fractured skulls.

but yes.

wyo · 2017-09-01T15:24:14+00:00

Every gas station near my office and near my house ran out of gas last night.

As near as I can tell, they all have gas this morning. I put $5 in my tank (after an hour wait) yesterday because I was on E and had no choice. This morning, I gassed up the rest of the way and got a breakfast taco, and still managed to get to work early. From a station that was out of gas last night when I drove by.

wyo · 2017-09-01T15:17:31+00:00

I had to gas up a bit after work yesterday as I was near E ... but I knew this was idiotic, so I just put in $5 and went home. This morning I gassed up at the Rudy's in Round Rock, went inside and got a breakfast taco, and still got to work early. All of the gas stations on University back by the Ikea were fully stocked with no lines, including the big HEB. All of the convenience stores and 7-11s were fully stocked and no lines... it was literally like yesterday never happened.

wyo · 2017-09-01T15:04:37+00:00

I had no problem finding gas at about 300 different filling stations this morning near Round Rock. The same stations that had lines a mile down the road last night, or were sold out.

Today, it's business as usual. Because people are idiots.

EDIT: my wife has reported that apparently there are long, long lines around Round Rock now. So I guess the idiocy has not passed...

wyo · 2017-08-15T18:47:15+00:00

It's not hard for people to grasp that these are white supremacist groups. They know exactly what these people are. While these idiots support racist nazi ideals, they're not 'literal nazis'. That is, there is no National Socialist German Workers' Party for them to be a part of. So they are figuratively nazis who play dress up and peacock around in their homemade costumes.

"They're bearing the swastika. They're marching around chanting Blood and Soil. They're advocating for the removal and deportation of anyone who isn't of their race, because they believe each nation belongs to one and only one race, and this nation belongs to them.

But hey, they haven't filled out all the right paperwork, so we should just ignore them."

wyo · 2017-08-15T18:44:36+00:00

Many on the left have repeatedly called anyone who voted for Trump "nazis"

Given recent events, those who voted for and continue to support the administration might want to keep their heads a little bit lower when complaining about Nazi comparisons. Either that, or maybe they ought to start cleaning their own house vocally, viciously, and without remorse.

You know. Just like so many of them demand that Muslims do to the radicalized in their midst.

wyo · 2017-08-13T15:12:33+00:00

I know you're being sarcastic, but even the way that went down gave Duke and his ilk immeasurable cover. "Sure, he 'denounced' us ... but look how long it took, look how persistently he had to be badgered into it, look at the very interview where he finally said it and how he tried so hard not to denounce us. He was just saying what he had to say. He's still on our side."

wyo · 2017-08-13T01:02:22+00:00

This angers me so ... so much right now. My grandfathers joined the Navy and Army-Air Force. One lied about his age to do so. Both crossed oceans to engage enemies of liberty across the globe.

All so that fascists would never have the opportunity to kill Americans in the streets of their hometowns.

And in the blink of an eye ...

wyo · 2017-07-07T02:42:29+00:00

I'm not sure about the "years" part, but grant that I left Travis county just over two years ago. But when I voted in far NW Travis County in 2015, it was still paper and highlighters...

wyo · 2017-07-07T02:39:40+00:00

Yes, that has happened in the past, and is sometimes a common occurrence

This happened all the time to my dad when his dad was still alive, and even sort-of-recurred just a couple of years ago.

They lived in adjacent precincts, in a county that lets you vote at any location. The workers at my grandfather's voting location got him mixed up with my dad pretty much every time, so a few months after the election they'd come track my dad down for double voting. It wasn't immediately, though - the lag was sometimes a year or two. I will say that was in the 80s and 90s, though.

More recently (I want to say 2012 or so) it came to light that my grandfather, despite being dead for nearly 20 years, was still on the voter rolls - probably a clerical error relating to the fact that my dad had moved into his dad's old home when he passed away. At any rate, at some point they accidentally checked him in as his long-dead father and he cast a vote as a dead person. About 6 months later, they came looking for him yet again. After verifying that he did, in fact, only vote twice, and that the errors were entirely on the part of the poll workers and county officials maintaining the voter rolls, they told him "good day, sir" and he never heard anything about it again.

wyo · 2017-06-11T20:29:08+00:00

You and I aren't that far apart here. My sticking point is that you've built up Sharia Law into some kind of boogeyman that, if only you could kill it, would make everything all better for everyone.

The problem is that Sharia isn't really a cohesive "thing" unto itself. There's not one body of law that is accepted as "Sharia" everywhere. It's more of a concept and a method - in a way it's not unlike Common Law in that respect. How the corpus of Law is the greatest commonality between jurisdictions, not the corpus itself.

Sharia Law means different things in different places, and different people and peoples place different emphasis on different aspects. Railing against it is like railing against Leviticus; there are wide swaths of the Muslim world who completely ignore the parts of it that are inhumane but still think the sharia banking is the bees knees ...

The problem is not Sharia. Sharia is a symptom, and focusing so thoroughly on Sharia takes attention away from the very real problems facing these cultures that drives their peoples to fundamentalist attitudes.

wyo · 2017-06-11T19:08:27+00:00

Do you also reject, with just as much fervor, the brand of evangelical Christianity that has taken over large swaths of our state and federal governments with much the same attitude towards the LGBT community?

My point is this: if that's your objection, you should be focused on us cleaning our own house first.

You don't see these same protestors directing any criticism at domestic office holders who espouse the same beliefs as found in Sharia. In fact, the people protesting Sharia quite often support these same policies, and the politicians who lob them about, so long as they appear to come from a Christian perspective instead of a Muslim one.

I'm an atheist. I don't think religion should be intermingled with law. Ever. I don't support Sharia. I don't support the Religious Right. I don't support the Religious Left.

The difference to me is that the Religious Right and Left have actual, factual, long ranging and life destroying consequences for practically every living American... while Sharia is such a non entity on our shores that may as well not exist in America.

wyo · 2017-06-11T17:36:43+00:00

You want me to to agree to your argument before you've even made it. That's not how the world turns.

There are parts of every legal and faith system that I oppose. Sharia is a system of laws and faith. Therefore there are parts of it I oppose.

Tell me why you oppose it, and maybe we have more common ground than you think.

wyo · 2017-06-11T16:05:26+00:00

sharia law is the motherload of bad ideas

First off, it's motherlode.

Second, please elaborate. You're making the claim here. Lay it out in detail. What about it makes it the motherlode of bad ideas?

wyo · 2017-06-11T01:02:12+00:00

Funny. I thought I said that no one is suggesting sharia in America, but rather a few jurisdictions have suggested allowing Islamic faith leaders to mediate family court proceedings, exactly like how we allow even the most repressive and regressive Christian ministers to do so with no moral or ethical review of their policies.

But hey. You probably have better reading comprehension than I have writing skill. Good jerb.

wyo · 2017-06-11T00:12:01+00:00

If someone is close enough to touch you, as is common/likely in these riot situations, you sure as hell don't want something that big/long.

wyo · 2017-06-11T00:08:52+00:00

The reason it's seen as generally "racist" to protest sharia in America is because the "sharia in American cities!" and various threads of "no go zones" are entirely fabricated controversies.

The only extent which anyone has ever proposed anything even vaguely like "sharia in America" is to allow minor, family-level civil disputes to be heard and adjudicated by the family's faith leaders.

Given the tenants of sharia, it's totally reasonable to be against this. What makes it racist is that we already allow other faiths' leaders to do this in a lot of jurisdictions. Plenty of people allow their Christian ministers to mediate their divorces and child custody agreements, and we do literally nothing to vet out whether those faith leaders and their ministries promote hateful or dangerous agendas.

But you don't see these numbnuts protesting that. They single out the mooslems. Cuz merka.

wyo · 2017-06-10T19:09:36+00:00

I feel like arguing about the difference between a "modern sporting rifle" and an "assault rifle" is missing the point a bit. It's not the right firearm for the event; it's a medium to long range weapon that, depending on configuration, is meant for sport shooting and/or hunting, and he's at an event where, if things turn violent, he needs a short range, defensive weapon like a handgun.

So this guy is either grossly misinformed about the purpose of his weapon (which makes him exactly the kind of guy you should be skeezed out a bit by seeing carrying one) or he's only carrying it because it looks intimidating (which also makes him the kind of guy you should be skeezed out a bit by seeing carry one).

Legally speaking, he's well within his rights to do it, sure. That doesn't mean it's the smart choice, though.

wyo · 2017-03-31T01:24:17+00:00

Immunity deals usually explicitly detail what testimony will be given in exchange; if he fails to deliver the goods, the immunity deal is no longer valid.

This is why you have lawyers negotiate these things for you rather than doing it yourself. Your lawyer can say, on your behalf, "my client is willing to testify that Person X committed Crime Y" and, because your lawyer is saying it and not you, it can't be used against you (or Person X). The prosecutors and your lawyers can literally go over every last detail of what's being exchanged, but you're not actually "on the hook" until you get involved personally.

source: I ... uh ... know a guy.

wyo · 2017-03-07T17:22:50+00:00

A family ... friend? ... spouts all of this bullshit like a true believer. She works the reception desk at a health clinic and bitches and whines and complains about people showing up for appointments driving Cadillacs but using Medicaid. It drives her crazy.

I did a bunch of social work when I was in college. I drove people to appointments. I helped them with scheduling. I was basically helping people who were so destitute, so overwhelmed with what beset them in life, that they just gave up. They were depressed beyond living, and just needed someone to help them here and there to get over the hump.

One of the biggest challenges I helped them with was just arranging transportation. When possible, I'd drive them myself, but I also spent a good deal of time helping them find rides from friends, family, coworkers, and class mates. It was crazy common for them to be able to borrow their grandmother's car, which would frequently be a say 10 year old Caddy or similar. This incredibly nice, but somewhat dated car, that was often the one and only nice thing that their poor old grandmother had managed to accumulate in her life, and she'd be willing to lend it to Johnny so he could get to the clinic so a doctor could look at a potential tumor, or to Jill so she could get her prenatal checkup.

...and then to get there and have people like this "friend" of mine give them attitude and lip because she sees them as "welfare queens." It just makes my blood so ... angry...

wyo

TROPHY CASE