that one guy
Every once in a while, I think about that one guy from the IT department at the university where I used to work, about 8 years ago. He was young, but a pretty good programmer - I tend to get along well with people who know a lot about computers. He didn’t do much else than work in the IT department, and almost all of his friends were also programmer types there. Since I hung around the IT department even though I worked in the library, I got to know him relatively well.
He worked long hours, and since he was classified staff (not academic), any hours over 40 were overtime. He got into this cycle where he would work almost 30 hours of overtime a week, which effectively doubled his salary. This seemed like a lot to me, but it wasn’t really my business. It wasn’t my business, that is, until our mutual supervisor (it was one of those library/IT merging situations) asked my opinion on this topic. The supervisor thought something was up with a constant 30 hour a week overtime, and started to make rules where people couldn’t work overtime without prior approval. It became a huge fight, specifically between my supervisor and that one guy. During the fight, my supervisor asked me what I thought, and I agreed, it seemed like that one guy wasn’t really putting out as much work as that, and if there was that much work to do anyway, then we should hire another person. So I weighed in on the excessive overtime of that one guy.
Shortly after I left there to start working at this job, I heard that that one guy hung himself in his apartment one weekend, still in the middle of the fight about overtime. That one guy obviously had some issues, my supervisor felt terrible, and so did I. It’s not my fault, obviously, it’s not anyone’s. But I wish I could have advised some other way to manage that whole situation.
I think about that one guy whenever a suicide comes up (sadly it came up over the weekend), and when dealing with difficult employees. Sometimes there are a lot more things going on inside peoples’ heads that we need to be careful about.
Posted by Marie on December 18th, 2006 under Changes
- updated photos on flickr
- ceiling fan, and baby exercises
- baby competition
- z’s first concert
- yay obama
- my lame halloween costume
- Our little social … human
- I guess time really is money
- starting and stopping work
- talking about breasts
- fresh out of the oven
- my life as a stay-at-home mom
- updated pictures on flickr
- but I do believe in miracles
- our little o negative baby
- blamers and the nuclear family
- his feet look like mine
- pictures on flickr
- new baby in the house
- We just joined the “buy more sh&t” club
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