Man saves kids from shark, gets fired
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Man saves kids from shark, gets fired – 02:23
— CNNSynopsis as I understand it: Doctor orders guy on sick leave due to work-related stress. Guy goes on vacation on beach. On said beach, shark attacks kids. He wrestles shark away, saves kids. Boss at work sees video of this going viral, fires guy as he's "supposed to be on sick leave".
Does no one think with the data anymore?
Then again, if PHB of job lets guy go, maybe it's a win for the guy?
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Then again, if PHB of job lets guy go, maybe it's a win for the guy?
It'll certainly help with the work-related stress.
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Story (Mar 2013): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9924601/Shark-wrestler-sacked-because-he-was-on-sick-leave.html (same synopsis)
Followup (Mar 2014): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-26545143 (Employment tribunal didn't go ahead because the two sides reached a settlement before it got that far.)
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TR is it took a year for that to get resolved…
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Employment tribunals over here take a while in general to get anywhere near a panel. (Discovery etc.)
And the employers aren't likely to simply give up if they don't think they have a case until it's demonstrated that the plaintiff is serious about taking them to the tribunal.
i.e. a date has been set for the tribunal itself.
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The guy saw the shark, it reminded him of his boss, and he just went bonkers!
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Boss at work sees video of this going viral, fires guy as he's "supposed to be on sick leave".
Well he was on the sick leave due to stress, right? Wrestling with sharks is definitely not a stressless situation.
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I love how the gurning HR drone appears to be expressing a genuine belief that a person on stress leave needs "permission" to leave the country.
Permission from whom, pray tell? Has the Land of the Free truly devolved to such an extent that employment really is equivalent to indentured servitude?
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Has the Land of the Free truly devolved to such an extent that employment really is equivalent to indentured servitude?
I wouldn't call Wales the Land of the Free....
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The
gurning HR droneEmmy Nominated TV Judge is clearly American, though, and it's her attitude that I personally found rather astounding.
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Those are just the random people that CNN convinced to come on the show and talk to them about this story.
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Sure, but why the hell did CNN even let that "permission" line get past first edit? Could it conceivably sound even a little bit plausible to any likely viewer, or are they just trying to compete on ONN's home turf?
Could The Use Of Flying Death Robots Be Hurting America's Reputation Worldwide? – 02:07
— The Onion
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It was live TV, so there is no edit. I don't think CNN has so many viewers these days. I dunno, maybe she was thinking about policies that say if you take more than x sick days in a row, you need doctor's note.
If these guys just had one leave pool, none of this would have been a problem.
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Has the Land of the Free truly devolved to such an extent that employment really is equivalent to indentured servitude?
Mine is. Admittedly I'm not in the US and as you all know, we don't even have a Constitution over here. But my employer runs the same model in the US too.
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This happened in the UK a few years ago as @PJH said, not entirely sure why it's back at the moment.
It's pretty common for employers to feel they are being taken advantage of if someone is on sick leave but not completely bedridden. If you are well enough to X you are well enough to Y where x.PhysicalDifficulty == y.PhysicalDifficulty seems to be the concept. The issue with this is the same as the issue with basically everything. being physically able to do something is a small subset of the requirements for being able to do something.
If I was the employer this would be my thought process on seeing my employee on holiday on sick leave:
- Thats outrageous! Where's this prick's sick note?
- Says here he was signed off with stress
- I now have the feeling that I am the one who is now the prick in this situation.
- Congratulate employee on his bravery and hope his holiday is helping him feel better, and remind him to take as much time as he needs.
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not entirely sure why it's back at the moment.
Slow news day somewhere presumably. Though I will admit to not hearing about this particular one before.
That said it's the sort of thing that ends up in the Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogogoch Shopper[1], rather than any of the nationals.
[1] I've noticed an increasing number of 'newspaper' websites chromed as if they come from something called
The $TOWNNAME Shopper
with local (from$TOWN
) stories in them. I've not bothered looking but I rather suspect there's a single entity behind all of them.
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Bit harsh this. What better cure for stress than a nice beach holiday?
The only reason the employer could object is if the guy's day job is:
- Lifeguard.
- Beach inspector.
- Big floppy hat tester.
- Professional shark fighter.
First go with the list thing. Not good.
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He can start a kickstarter now and get 100k easy.
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Has the Land of the Free truly devolved to such an extent that employment really is equivalent to indentured servitude?
This is the UK. They're doing their damnedest to re-create Airship One and have been for a decade.
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Professional shark fighter.
And such is the state of "Journalism" today that nobody asked:
"Are you a Professional Shark Fighter?"
Filed under: I wonder if he's a member of the AMAA
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This is the UK. They're doing their damnedest to re-create AirsTRip One and have been for a decade.
F FT Y
Th e U K an a ir sh ip? Th ey m ad e it f ly ho w ? L ot sa bal lo ons?
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So someone Jeff'd this from Sidebar WTF to Funny stuff. I didn't think it was funny. Did I miss a joke somewhere?
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Although it's a WTF, it's not related to code, screenshots, programming, IT, or software development, so I Jeff'd it elsewhere, just as I do with religious, political, and environmental WTFs. I should probably have Jeff'd it to General, sorry.
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Although it's a WTF, it's not related to code, screenshots, programming, IT, or software development, so I Jeff'd it elsewhere, just as I do with religious, political, and environmental WTFs. I should probably have Jeff'd it to General, sorry.
Side Bar: Because more things make us ask WTF than just code.
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Since when did Sidebar have to related to IT?
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Side Bar: Because more things make us ask WTF than just code.
True; Jeff'd back to Sidebar
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Well, that wasn't much of a war…
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Well he was on the sick leave due to work stress, right? Wrestling with sharks is definitely not a stressless situation.
Added an important qualifier there.
But the shark stress wasn't work related. And, depending on his personality, it may have been more stressful for him to sit by and do nothing while the shark attacked the kid.
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There's also the fact that it was an emergency.
Suppose that instead of being relaxing on a beach to recover from stress and seen a shark, he'd been at home in bed getting over a nasty bug. Suppose, as a result he was there to see when the house next door caught fire. He called the fire brigade but they were going to take some time to get there because they lived in the back end of beyond. If he dragged himself out of bed to go and make sure the disabled elderly couple who lived there had been able to get out ok, would he be told that he obviously wasn't ill enough not to come to work?
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it may have been more stressful for him to sit by and do nothing while the shark attacked the kid.
I can't really imagine a person that this WOULDN'T be true for? Aren't we kinda hardwired to save the kids at all costs?