Surviving the Workday

Today in WWN: Violence in the Workplace

I hate Take Your Kids to Work Day. It’s distracting to the workers, boring for the kids, and it’s pretty much there so parents feel like they are active in their children’s lives and HR can point out how family friendly the company is. Except when there are tasers involved.

The most intriguing part of this article is not that a woman tried to bite a member of the flight crew on a London-bound flight, but that she did so after consuming, among other things, a bottle of liquid soap from the airplane lavatory.

Oh, how often I wanted to do this when I worked retail. I really want to hear the full story here. It sounds like it was along the lines of “I want to return this.” “No.” “Oh, can I talk to a manager please?” &%$#@ smack down. At least I generally waited until after the customer insulted me before I wanted to start punching.

But here’s a case where it sounds like violence against the customer was justified. Apparently, all it took to get this customer started on throwing things at the owner and his mother was a sign that said “Sorry, we are not a daycare center.  Please control your children.” (See #1 entry above?)

Up for Stupidest Boss on the Planet Award is the guy who thought it would be funny to stage a workplace shooting but not bring everyone in on the joke. “No Horseplay” indeed.

We know that fast food is bad for you. We know it can even lead to an early death, if abused too much. But when even the signage starts killing people, that’s an issue.

May all of you avoid tasers and stupid bosses this week.