I just read the post about the photo of the new S&W being leaked and resultiing in a couple of firings. Even tho' this post has absolutely nothing to do with that it got me to recalling an event that happened to me back in 1986.
I was the supervisor over a crew of communication tech's, we were working out of Nashville at the Eaton plant in Bowling Green Ky. At the time I had 6 people working under me, two of which were problems from the start. Much drinking and some drug abuse, which at that point in time was rampant. The problem was (other than the obvious one) that one of these two was the Son of the owner of the company and the other was his Brother-in-Law. Besides the substance abuse problem these two were blatant womanizers, both married to very attractive women, but that didn't stop them from chasing every skirt that flapped in the breeze.
I had talks with them and upper managment and was basically told to just supervise the job and mind my own business. Well, being relatively naive at the time I let it go at that.
We were working nights at this plant pulling cable and it was a large plant, several hundred thousand square feet and it was not possible to be everywhere at once, you have to trust others at times, and I did, even knowing thier problems. Things finally blew up after a couple of months. It seems that these two jokers were sexually harrassing a female security gaurd while she would make rounds, evidently it got so bad that she finally suffered what amounted to a breakdown and went to her supervisors and threatened to quit.
At the time I knew nothing of this, not one word from anyone had gotten back to me, the first I heard of it was when i took a day off from work on a Friday. I called my boss about 9:00pm to ask what develpments had occured and a status for the following week. It was then i learned that things had come to a boil at the plant, all kinds of upper managment was involved and our company was about to lose the contract. I was told that a couple of meetings were held and the end result was that I, as the supervisor, was to be terminated for allowing sexual harrassment to occur on the job.
Wow.
I was never given the opportunity to defend myself and of course the two punks that caused the trouble in the first place kept thier jobs, they were just moved to a new project.
This taught me one valuable lesson in life: Never, never, under any circumstance take on a responsiblity when kinfolk of the owners are involved in a position underneath you.
This has always stuck in my craw, even after all these years. Imagine trying to explain to your Wife how you got fired from a job on a sexual harrasment related charge. Not the easiest thing to do if you know what i mean.
As I said, this post has nothing to do with anything, but I've always wanted to get it off my chest.
RD

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