Explosive Departure 3

[KENAT]

Not sure this is exactly the right forum but:

Recently had a fairly senior apps guy leave the firm, basically he was disgruntled with his lot and the management.

Having been escorted off the premises later that day he sent an email to about half the site, in which he blasted management, big time.

Whilst arguably (or not so arguably) unprofessional and certainly burning bridges I couldn’t help but find it slightly amusing.

Anyone have any similar stories worth sharing.

Ken

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

One guy I worked with had spent many of his own time creating a report & recommendations for creating a new product & an assembly/storage area for it. At that time we were having status report meetings every morning, so he emailed the report (on Friday) to the boss/owner for his perusal over the weekend in preparation for the Monday meeting. Come meeting time, the boss/owner started asking questions which had been well covered by the report, and my colleague, stunned, informed him of this. The boss replied, "Oh that, I didn't bother reading it".

After what seemed like a lifetime of deafening silence, my colleague erupted, he called the boss every name under the sun, stormed out of the building and tried to slam the door. Unfortunately the door had a closer on it which made it somewhat difficult to slam. So he figured his foot would help. Well, glass door vs closer vs size 11 boot ... you figure it out. He never came back.

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[ivymike]

hmm.. different approach than I'd have tried - in my experience, it's pretty typical for managers to skip over "actual reading" of technical reports - and you're well advised not to call them on it.

 

[vpl]

This is the opening paragraph of a two page cover e-mail that one of my coworkers e-mailed to EVERYONE in the company about a year and a half ago:

I am a XXXXX and the following is evidence of one of the hundreds of classified and unclassified examples of the [company] deceptively: misleading Congress, the public, most of the [company’s] staff, etc; circumventing the rulemaking process by instituting a new regulatory framework in violation of the current [industry] regulations; allowing unsafe plant changes that will soon cause a US Chernobyl; and various other illegal activities.

He also included an eight page diatribe that had me shaking my head regarding his possible sanity. Although, when you got through the hyperbole, he actually raised some good points.

While not an explosive departure (he still works here), it definitely raised more than a few eyebrows. So it sort of fits the loose category of "amusing but bridge burning stories."




Patricia Lougheed

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[CorBlimeyLimey]

This was after a loooong line of ongoing & very annoying things from this particular boss. The very existence of the company was riding on this product and the recommendations should have received more attention than such a flippant remark. For my colleague, it was the last straw.

Most of the recommendations were later adopted ... and the boss claimed ownership of the ideas.

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[ajack1]

It is hard to see what the guy in the OP gained by doing this.

I have always tried to leave a job on the best possible terms. I work in a fairly specialised field so you keep coming across the same people, I see no point in trying to upset anyone as it can always harm you in the future.

At the very best he is likely to get unfavourable an unfavourable reference and possibly harm his future some where down the line. By sending something in “writing” that the company can intercept depending on how he badmouthed the company and or management he could be landing himself in trouble legally.

All in all it seems pretty stupid to me.

 

[HgTX]

Without being so explosive, is there any good way for someone outgoing to let it be known why they were leaving so that perhaps the situation might be improved for others, without the outgoing person completely screwing themselves in the ways ajack1 mentions?

Hg

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[ivymike]

Exit interview with appropriate parties? Professional-sounding letter to HR?

 

[HgTX]

All still risky...

Hg

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[ivymike]

Risky? You're already leaving! If you can't give someone polite feedback on your way out the door for fear of cross-company reprisals, then maybe your whole industry stinks!

 

[arunmrao]

Like as in other relationships breaking up is difficult and painful.Emotions are certainly involved and it needs a huge amount of self restraint on both the ends to have a smooth parting of ways.

Being goody goody, is I feel hypocrisy and will not serve any purpose.

 

[KENAT]

I gather the guy in question had already lined up a job in another, completely unrelated, industry. He actually started by asking for a lay off with several weeks severance as I understand it. At the same time he apparently verbally told off the VP of that business segment. This was taken as giving notice and after consulting with HR the VP escorted him off site. The message was sent later in the day, apparently after he'd had a drink or two to celebrate.

At least one other fairly senior person here has decided he's a hero!

So I suspect what he got out of it was an immense sense of satisfaction.

Surely everyone here has dreamt of telling the management off as some point in their career; though I guess most of us consider it wise not to pursue this option, at least not as far as this guy, for the sake of our career.

 

[HgTX]

I'm not leaving.

But looking at the discussion of bad referrals, etc., if someone is leaving because of problems with management, is there any way at all to let management know that there was that kind of a problem, without burning the kind of bridges referred to here?

How necessary is a referral from a former boss?

Hg

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[ewh]

Hg has a good point. Exit interviews and letters to HR can have a way of becoming invisible to those remaining that would benefit from them.

 

[MadMango]

I've seen two situations. One place I worked had an employee in a wheelchair that worked on the second floor. Our elevator was notorious for breaking down, probably had a 40% up time. It was standard practice for him to wait for several people to physically lift his chair up and down the stairs. This employee had been laid-off, and was very angry, blaming the company and all of his co-workers for his termination.

As he was trying to leave, the elevator was not working, and there was no one around to help him. He saw the CEO in the lobby talking with clients, and at first asked nicely to get help for him. The CEO blew him off, gesturing towards the client. The guy in the chair exploded, screaming at the top of his lungs, issuing every conceivable swear, curse and foul word in his extensive vocabulary. It didn’t take long for the CEO to find several people to not only help him down the stairs, but also to his car and to the street.

The second situation wasn’t explosive, just plain scary. At another company an employee was terminated, and it was generally known that he was a survivalist, conspiracy theorists, and was very anti-government. When they escorted him off the property, he had made a few unsavory comments about the company president and his inability to keep himself safe. Within the hour we had 4 armed security guards on the property, 2 plain-clothed, 2 in uniform. They stayed for 60 days until the president no longer felt threatened. The funny thing was, several weeks after this person was fired, our main power transformer shorted. Since the weather could not be blamed, everyone suspected the former employee.

[green]"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."[/green]

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[DaveVikingPE]

Building on a recent thread of mine... My soon-to-be-former coworkers and bosses just took me out to lunch. That was nice of them. I'll never badmouth 'em - not that I'd have a reason to, either.

 

[Guest0527211403]

The only departure I've made in the engineering business was somewhat explosive, but I kept it between the boss and myself, despite how I felt.

I had recieved three consecutive bounced paycheqes, and every time my boss found someone to blame (our HR person, the bank, clients, etc). I usually had to wait an extra week for my pay, and I had to cash the cheque at our company's bank branch.

After rubber cheque number three, I was behind on my rent and my bank account was in overdraft. The last straw was when I found out that my boss had just bought a one year old Yamaha R1 with cash. It must have taken me 5 minutes to write my resignation, drop it on his desk, pack my stuff and get out of there. I haven't looked back since.

 

[EddyC]

I think that we've all had employers that we'd like to tell off. It shouldn't surprise us that some folks actually do. "Professionalism" seems to be a character trait that is exhibited at the employer's convenience, not the employee's. I've found very little of it (Professionalism) over my 22 years in engineering, and usually its exhibited by the "worker bees" of the profession rather than the management.

 

[HVACctrl]

Well said EddyC!

Ed

http://www.engineerboards.com

 

[MikeHalloran]

Crazy, stupid, incompetent, lying sleaze managers usually keep their jobs long after it becomes apparent to everyone, including HR and Top Management, that they are crazy, stupid, etc.

The reason is simple; Top Management must admit to making a mistake in hiring and/or keeping them before they can be discharged.

Since Top Management hardly ever makes mistakes, you can see that there is a strong disincentive toward characterizing said managers as crazy, stupid, etc.

There is no point in pointing out the obvious in an exit interview, for two reasons:

1. Everyone who should know, already knows.

2. HR will transcribe your exit interview, and use parts of it, taken out of context, to defame you, when prospective employers call for a referral.

2b. Giving HR _any_ material to work with, especially already transcribed, is just stupid.

;---

Getting a referral from a former boss is a waste of time; nobody believes anything that you supply.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA