Mad To Work Here

The Times reports on a rather unpleasant bit of work bullying:

The top police dog-handling academy in Germany was mired in scandal yesterday after claims that female cadets had been forced to wear electric collars, crawl on all fours and bark on command.

If an insider is to be believed, [...] drunken beatings of cadets and dogs, physical and verbal abuse and a groundswell of neo-Nazi sympathy were part of the daily routine.

Some cadets were forced to drink beer mugs full of steaming urine. “Trainees also had to drink a cocktail made up of rubbish fished out of bins and rotting food,” said the anonymous eight-page letter sent to the Nürnberger Nachrichten newspaper.

Quite bizarre.

Fascinating post here about a rather inept attempt to go on holiday while pretending to be sick:

One of our employee's was caught lying about his absence quite spectacularly today.

The employee in question had been calling in sick all week, claiming he was at home in bed with a chest infection.

In reality he has been several hundred miles away in Eastern Europe.

When we heard the rumours, which were as in depth as having his flight times and departure airport, we had a look on the web to see what we could find.

It's amazing just how much you can find, as with just a surname and flight number we were able to get a copy of the employee's flight confirmation from the airline website.

With this in front of us, it was with great satisfaction that we took his call this morning.

On several occasions we asked him exactly where he was. When we asked if we could visit him at home you could hear the panic in his voice, but even at this stage he wouldn't admit the truth.

It was only when we put him out of his misery by telling him what we knew that he admitted where he was and profusely apologised.

Whether profusely apologising will be enough to save his job is highly questionable...

Well done to Office Humour Blog for spotting this outrageous story from Spiegel Online

A female German bank cashier has been convicted of stealing money from children's piggy banks and ordered to pay €1,800 to a charity.

The 45-year-old woman, who has since lost her job at a savings bank in the southern city of Augsburg, received a suspended six-month sentence. The public prosecutor's office had sought a tougher penalty for a crime it called "deeply immoral."

The cashier was found guilty of stealing a total of €60 from children aged one to nine who had handed over their piggy banks to pay their pocket money into a savings account. But the prosecutor suspected that was just the "tip of the iceberg." He said the children's confidence in the bank had been massively damaged.

Am I wrong to be laughing as I read it?

China has banned fire department officials from receiving sexual favours as bribes from companies seeking their business, local media reported on Friday, according to Reuters.

Who knows whether this is real or not, but it looks convincing judging by the damage.

On one of our favourite blogs - Passive Aggressive Notes - there's a gem of an email about fruitcake from the organiser of the "fun fund" in a Toronto Office.

Visit Passive Aggressive Notes to see the email in all its P/A glory.

Just found this on a solicitors' website:

A former supermarket worker who was sacked after posting a video of his workmates on YouTube has been awarded over £2,000 in compensation.

Craig Taylor, 24, was working at Somerfield in Aberdeen when his bosses discovered he had posted the video which showed one of this colleagues being hit on the head with a plastic bag stuffed with other plastic bags.

He was sacked following a disciplinary hearing, after Somerfield claimed that the video had brought the grocery giant into disrepute.

However, the employment tribunal rejected the claim and awarded compensation of £2,283 on the grounds that Mr Taylor had been unfairly dismissed.

Mr Taylor had told the court that he had not been present at the time when the video was filmed and that the clip had been uploaded on a colleague's mobile phone.

He also claimed that he had been drunk when he uploaded the clip to the website.

I love this decision. Can't find the video, though. But here's another (one of many) Somerfield antics video:

More Somerfield videos here.

DisgruntledWorkforce.com is a MadToWorkHere must-read.
It's a place for people to vent steam about their hideous work-lives. It's quite sad really. Sad that some people have such crap jobs, sad that some people have crap bosses and sad that some people clearly have no idea how to go about fixing things that are wrong.

All of which makes it very funny. Anyway, this post sounds particularly sad an example of a lonely, existential hell:

Dear Visitors To The Office,

It’s true that I sit close to the door, but I am NOT your gofer. If you’re here to see someone, you need to call him or her from the phone next to the door and get him or her to buzz you in. NO, the security system is NOT my fault. My desk does NOT have a magic button to let you in, nor can I just let anyone who just shows up into the office.

If the person you’re visiting can’t come to the door fast enough for your impatient ass, do not wave at me. Do not knock 200 times or pound on the door. First, I can see you, and second, I don’t care that you’re locked out. Third, when you roll your eyes because I am not jumping up to do your bidding, I CAN SEE YOU because you are BEHIND A GLASS WALL, DUMBASS.

If I take pity on you and let you in, you should say “Thank you,” not huff angrily in my general direction. Maybe if you had been paying attention downstairs when you got your security badge, this wouldn’t happen.

Sincerely,
Nelle (NOT THE DOORWOMAN, New York)

CommunityCare.co.uk is proposing the idea of a workplace Asbo or Wasbo.

They've put together a list of their top 10 anti-social office behaviours:

Legal site Out-Law reports on some rather mean-spirited actions from a tile shop called Tile It All in Scotland:

The firing of an employee who used text messages to call in sick after his brother's death was unfair, an Edinburgh employment tribunal has ruled. An employment law specialist said the case sends a warning to bosses to enforce policies consistently.

The East Lothian Courier reports that Mark Morrison worked as a sales adviser for tile shop Tile It All. When his brother died last December, Morrison sent a text message to his manager, Robert Selley, to inform him. He subsequently sent a text to say he would be off sick until after the funeral.

Morrison claims that Selley phoned and told him to bring a doctor's certificate with him on his return to work. That claim was denied by Selley. Morrison also claims that no comment was made when he returned to work and handed in his sick line, according to the newspaper.

Four days later, Morrison stayed home again. He sent text messages to his employer on five consecutive days to say that he was depressed and not coming to work.

Morrison's employer summoned him to a disciplinary hearing and subsequently dismissed him for failing to follow company procedures for reporting absences. The policy stated that absences should be notified by phone calls or sick lines sent in, according to the report.

Tribunal chair Susan O'Brien said:

"The company's complaint that text messages were not acceptable was petty, and in any event the tribunal did not believe that the claimant had been told he must not notify absence by way of text messages. Throughout these events, the local manager and Mr Selley were perfectly well aware of the reason for the claimant's absence. A modicum of common sense could have straightened all this out."

More details at Out-Law

Legal site Out-Law reports on some rather mean-spirited actions from a tile shop called Tile It All in Scotland:

The firing of an employee who used text messages to call in sick after his brother's death was unfair, an Edinburgh employment tribunal has ruled. An employment law specialist said the case sends a warning to bosses to enforce policies consistently.

The East Lothian Courier reports that Mark Morrison worked as a sales adviser for tile shop Tile It All. When his brother died last December, Morrison sent a text message to his manager, Robert Selley, to inform him. He subsequently sent a text to say he would be off sick until after the funeral.

Morrison claims that Selley phoned and told him to bring a doctor's certificate with him on his return to work. That claim was denied by Selley. Morrison also claims that no comment was made when he returned to work and handed in his sick line, according to the newspaper.

Four days later, Morrison stayed home again. He sent text messages to his employer on five consecutive days to say that he was depressed and not coming to work.

Morrison's employer summoned him to a disciplinary hearing and subsequently dismissed him for failing to follow company procedures for reporting absences. The policy stated that absences should be notified by phone calls or sick lines sent in, according to the report.

Tribunal chair Susan O'Brien said:

"The company's complaint that text messages were not acceptable was petty, and in any event the tribunal did not believe that the claimant had been told he must not notify absence by way of text messages. Throughout these events, the local manager and Mr Selley were perfectly well aware of the reason for the claimant's absence. A modicum of common sense could have straightened all this out."

More details at Out-Law

Yet another very sad, plaintive note on Disgruntled Workforce:

I’m a go getter and like the day to pass quickly. So I constantly ask for something ANYTHING to do. So you ask me to lamenate things…. pointless and meaningless thing…. now when I said ANYTHING I really meant anything productive! Like, for example running some reports on where the hell aaaaalll the companies money is going, and why none of our projects make any money. Or perhaps looking into finding a solution for all the thousands of pounds worth of equipment that goes “missing”.

But no, your right. The “Please wash your mug. Don’t leave it in the sink” sign does desparately need laminated.

I am 22. That doesn’t mean I’m stupid. It means I’m young, enthusiastic and keen. Or, I was before I came here!

Well, aside from the fact that s/he could fill up some of the time by spell-checking his/her work, we do desperately wonder which construction company this is about.