The case of the bomb-making, inappropriately defecating boss.
March 11, 2016 4:30 PM   Subscribe

"He testified, rather, that he had “put his own feces into a bag and put the bag into a co-worker’s lunch.” So there was a bag. I mean, he’s not a total barbarian. On the other hand, there was no bag involved when, as he also testified, he once “sat on a catwalk and defecated toward a co-worker in the ditch below him.” (I assume “toward” means his aim was off, thankfully.)... You may be surprised to learn that these are arguably not the worst things this guy did." (h/t Ask A Manager)
posted by palindromic (49 comments total) 26 users marked this as a favorite
 
Criminy. I've had bosses who shat all over my sense of self-worth or my will to live, but none who shat into my lunchbox.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:35 PM on March 11, 2016 [27 favorites]


so now we've gone from "who moved my cheese?" to "who cut that loaf?"
posted by pyramid termite at 4:41 PM on March 11, 2016 [10 favorites]


I've only had one shitty boss in my life, but even he wasn't this shitty.
posted by tobascodagama at 4:46 PM on March 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


The original link, I think.

This fellow can just thank his lucky stars he didn't build a clock.
posted by qntm at 4:56 PM on March 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


Ladies and gents, the Western Slope.
posted by brennen at 5:00 PM on March 11, 2016 [6 favorites]


I have a friend who is the director of HR at a major medical college. The stories he tells me would make an excellent reality TV show or documentary. Seriously, they have been some of the most incredible, egotistical, and cringe-worthy things I've heard. And what blew my mind a bit was that these things were pretty par for the course for large organizations.
posted by SpacemanStix at 5:02 PM on March 11, 2016 [4 favorites]


What a sociopath.
posted by biggreenplant at 5:02 PM on March 11, 2016


Once English’s own supervisor learned about all this, he terminated him immediately, and of course I’m kidding about that because English was promoted. He testified, though, that this was only after the supervisor “asked him to stop building bombs because there had been complaints”—not, apparently, because building bombs and setting them off near co-workers might be against company policy.
posted by amanda at 5:07 PM on March 11, 2016 [11 favorites]


I am from Western Colorado. I grew up in Grand Junction, and have a lot of family in Montrose. That this happened there surprises me not one bit.
posted by heurtebise at 5:11 PM on March 11, 2016 [4 favorites]


At first, I thought perhaps this was a link to this TAL segment.
posted by mwhybark at 5:12 PM on March 11, 2016 [6 favorites]


And what blew my mind a bit was that these things were pretty par for the course for large organizations

My experience has typically been that large organizations are terrified that someone will sue them. Most of the flagrantly unprofessional behavior I've encountered has been at smaller companies.

IMO this company is lucky they got sued for wrongful termination, before one of these "pranks" injured or killed someone.
posted by aubilenon at 5:15 PM on March 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


So Freud's idea of the "anal explosive" personality both was and wasn't as full of it as we've come to believe?
posted by jamjam at 5:20 PM on March 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


I grew up a lot in the Crested Butte/Gunnison area. And yeah, I'm still surprised by this.
posted by Navelgazer at 5:22 PM on March 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


as full of it

it's the anal retentives who are full of it
posted by BungaDunga at 5:27 PM on March 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


Can anyone find the actual court documents?
posted by ctmf at 5:37 PM on March 11, 2016


And what blew my mind a bit was that these things were pretty par for the course for large organizations.

I get some that I never thought I would see, like, the training videos must be exaggerating, right? Not even close.

And then every time I talk to our lawyer, I find out mine are not even in the running for most wtf case on his desk.
posted by ctmf at 5:40 PM on March 11, 2016 [9 favorites]


You may be surprised to learn that these are arguably not the worst things this guy did.

It's weird that, although setting potentially fatal bombs for your coworkers as a prank is objectively worse than pooping in their lunches, I am more shocked by the pooping.

Like, I can, with a little bit of effort, empathize with the crazy mindset that believes that hiding milk jugs full of acetylene near where your employees will soon be using blowtorches is hilarious. I can not, however, with any amount of effort, connect to the mindset that results in pooping in someone's lunch, at work or otherwise.
posted by 256 at 5:42 PM on March 11, 2016 [20 favorites]


And then every time I talk to our lawyer, I find out mine are not even in the running for most wtf case on his desk.

I've always been impressed by our HR director who always seems to be cool as a cucumber. I think now it's because he's seen everything and isn't surprised anymore. Anything I've brought his way was probably a good day. The greatest trick HR ever pulled was convincing the world that problems of this magnitude rarely exist.
posted by SpacemanStix at 5:47 PM on March 11, 2016 [7 favorites]


I think we have a contestant for Guy Fieri's new season of DDD.

"It's a little nutty, but rolls off the palate with that partially digested corn hulls. A donkey sauce dip and these feces are off the chain!"
posted by dr_dank at 5:57 PM on March 11, 2016


"Defecating toward" is a fascinating word combination that I have never before encountered. It implies a heroic level of body control combined with a definite underlying malevolence.
posted by crazylegs at 6:38 PM on March 11, 2016 [55 favorites]


What kills me is that this is a water district, which is a quasi-public entity. It's not Uncle Joe's Plumbing, you know?

Amazing shit.
posted by suelac at 6:46 PM on March 11, 2016 [4 favorites]


I can not, however, with any amount of effort, connect to the mindset that results in pooping in someone's lunch, at work or otherwise.

Now, now. He shat in a bag and put the bag in his lunchbox. Be fair.

Seriously, though, the thing reads like someone at the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association chained Larry the Cable Guy in a basement for three years and fed him nothing but lead paint chips before releasing into the wild to "supervise" Mr. Bailey.
posted by Diablevert at 6:46 PM on March 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


Amazing shit.

I see what you did there.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:48 PM on March 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


My partner described it as an episode of Trailer Park Boys. Ricky is Mr. English and Julian is Mr. Fletcher in this scenario.
posted by palindromic at 6:50 PM on March 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


The Norden bombsight was a World War II-era invention that allowed the accurate dropping of ordnance and was essentially an analog computer that constantly calculated a bomb's trajectory based on current flight conditions.

Not sure why I felt that this was the time and the place to bring that up, but something just felt right.
posted by indubitable at 6:54 PM on March 11, 2016 [16 favorites]


From qntm's link:
George Etchart, president of the water users association’s board of directors, said he believed the judge’s order was one-sided, and he claimed someone is circulating the order in a “blatant attempt to insult the association, to discredit the association.”
Uhhh, dude. Although, if he contends that the order was one-sided, I'd be really, really interested to know what the other "side" is.

Meanwhile, from a later article in the same paper (Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, 2016/02/16):
“A lot of consideration was being taken in the situation. We’re not going to go into the personnel issues, we just want to make the statement that Aaron [the erstwhile bomb-maker and lunchbox-shitter] resigned back in January and Steve [the boss who promoted him] has chosen to resign effective today,” Etchart said.
posted by mhum at 7:05 PM on March 11, 2016 [6 favorites]


Sounds like the Water Users Association really wishes the judge would just turn the other cheek.
posted by biogeo at 7:11 PM on March 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


At some point this also occurred to the judge, who then “advised Mr. English of his Fifth Amendment rights,” but happily for us, not until after the above testimony.


This sentence is my favorite part.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:22 PM on March 11, 2016 [25 favorites]


You know, I was talking to a new supervisor in our really tough field today and working on encouraging her to hang in. It takes a long time to feel confident! Be kinder to yourself! I've been doing this for 15 years and every day there are things I struggle with-it's normal!

And really, I should just send her this and tell her to relax-you've got this!
posted by purenitrous at 7:44 PM on March 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


Aaron [the erstwhile bomb-maker and lunchbox-shitter] resigned back in January and Steve [the boss who promoted him] has chosen to resign effective today

Coming soon to an unsuspecting PUC near you, which has sorely neglected its background check procedures in hiring...
posted by spacewrench at 7:45 PM on March 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


You know, I have spent most of today looking at houses that I can't afford, getting into unnecessary arguments with my kids who really don't want to be dragged all over town, feeling entirely miserable about my life and my choices. I have been sitting here desperately trying to get past my unjustified self-pity, and thinking "how do I put my actually-quite-good life into a proper perspective and acknowledge that I am in many respects an adult who makes good, well-reasoned choices?" And then there was this:
77. Mr. Fletcher testified that Claimant's lack of communication with Mr. English was a fireable offence. He testified that setting off explosions close to employees could be a fireable offense, but that it depended on the "severity of the explosions". He testified that setting fires on purpose was not a fireable offense. When asked whether putting one's feces in a coworker's lunch was a fireable offense, Mr. Fletcher testified that "there [are] always pranks"
Thank you Mr. Fletcher. Just... thank you.
posted by langtonsant at 7:53 PM on March 11, 2016 [14 favorites]


Ah, yes. My hometown. I am not at all surprised that this is how it would make Metafilter.
posted by forza at 8:24 PM on March 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


... and by "hometown", I hasten to clarify, the town I grew up in. I no longer live there. You can probably guess some of the reasons for that.
posted by forza at 8:29 PM on March 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


Western Slope's old home week on mefi. There are dozens of us!

Had a friend's father sub in as a ditch ranger for a week in that area. He kept finding hoses in the ditches and pulled them out. After the first day, one of the good old boys casually mentioned that the folks growing that kind of crop, in and among the corn fields, didn't take kindly to losing their water.

Yeah, I don't miss the land of local politics, old families, and nepotism.
posted by underflow at 8:35 PM on March 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


And I grew up in a zero tolerance school.

O.o
posted by AlexiaSky at 8:44 PM on March 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


You know who else shit into plastic bags and packed them carefully away?

Yeah, that's right, the Apollo astronauts.

I... I don't know where I'm going with this.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 8:48 PM on March 11, 2016 [27 favorites]


Mare Tranquillitatis?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:49 PM on March 11, 2016 [6 favorites]


What a squat cobbler.
posted by ian1977 at 9:03 PM on March 11, 2016


"Defecating toward" is a fascinating word combination that I have never before encountered. It implies a heroic level of body control combined with a definite underlying malevolence.

I fart in your general direction!
posted by BungaDunga at 9:55 PM on March 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've worked in places where the end result of the boss shitting in an employee's lunch box would be the employee leaving in handcuffs and the boss leaving on a stretcher. I'm glad this guy kept his cool and sued instead.
posted by double block and bleed at 10:55 PM on March 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


You'd think that a supervisor at a water treatment facility would know that shit rolls downhill.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 4:19 AM on March 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


I understand that Assholes like English exist.
But why did he get promoted?!
posted by Omnomnom at 5:51 AM on March 12, 2016


Maybe he had done this before to his bosses and his bosses were just over-joyed because they were John Waters fans.
posted by Nanukthedog at 6:01 AM on March 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I was a little bit surprised that the lunchbox loaf-leaver didn't suffer any kind of on-the-job accident.
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:01 PM on March 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


I found the actual court documents.
posted by KathrynT at 2:48 PM on March 12, 2016 [11 favorites]


There are people out there shitting on their coworkers and building pipe bombs during company time AND getting promoted.
Meanwhile, I'm unemployed. Let that shit sink in, Neekee.
posted by Neekee at 2:49 PM on March 12, 2016 [6 favorites]


Yes, Neekee, now you know what to do to get ahead in 2016 America. (Mr. English has a bright future as a mid-level official in the Trump Administration... yes, I went there)
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:34 PM on March 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


The next thread is "This is why you always look down".
posted by sneebler at 6:37 PM on March 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


For a man armed with both bags of poo and acetylene bombs, I think he showed remarkable restraint in not combining the two.
posted by ryanrs at 7:29 AM on March 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


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