If they’re still calling you for help, you should set a consulting rate and answer them. I recommend $500/hour or fraction thereof, net 7, plus whatever your state allows for late payments. Fax them the rate, with a statement that any phone call from their employees requesting services is acceptance of the agreement.

Sounds very familiar. I hope you dont help those guys. I helped out the company that bought out the last place I worked and let me go because they couldnt afford me but they could afford one of my assistants who would call daily to ask me how to do things.
I finally told him even though I really liked him, I WASNT being paid to help. He has only called once or twice since then.

I guess you should be glad you didn’t say “So, I need to go light
a fire under the Network Security Department?” You’d probably be up
on terrorism charges…

This reminds me a bit of a recent experience someone I know had. He made a comment at work about a firearm he was buying, particularly that he’d deliberately bought something fairly ineffective, where you’d have to try really hard to actually kill someone with it. Somehow this was enough to get him fired.

To add insult to injury, when he wrote a sardonic, VERY obviously darkly humorous comic about the experience, the company had the police sent to his home to investigate him for “terroristic threats.”

I understand that people have to take potential threats seriously, but all common sense has gone out the window. I almost never advocate lawsuits as solutions to problems because I abhor our overly-litigious society, but I think this will continue until someone sues, and wins, over one of these firings or investigations. As long as companies feel it’s safer for them to be irrationally paranoid rather than exercise some common sense, that’s what they’ll do.

Zero Tolerance Policy is another face of so-called Political Correctness. “You shouldn’t be emotional even if you are pissed off, it is not professional” – I was said that by the guy who “simply forgot” to pay me for my 4 months services, and now says, he cannot frustrate his accountant with so large sum. I, definitely, was very emotional on this issue – now, I’m reprimanded for that. Sounds familiar?
What are the rules of “political correctness”? Somebody very aggressively claims his “rights,” and then any objection is considered as “politically incorrect.” In this particular case, those incapable idiots at “security department” claimed that everything they are doing is right; now, any emotional outburst toward them is considered as a “threat” that cannot be tolerated. Of course, it is THE THREAT, because if Mark’s reaction was taken seriously by his managers, those responsible for “switching him off the network” and, consequently, endangering hundreds of people would be punished. Now, these “lazy boys” are OK, and Mark isn’t – because he “allowed himself to be emotional” on this “act of security.”
The longer we’ll tolerate this stupidity, the more America will become the “country of idiots”… Bill Gates recently used very sad statistics: only 13% of adult Americans are able to comprehend what they read… And, by the way, those who cannot comprehend are usually the most aggressive ones – in protecting their “right to inability of doing the job.” I’m glad to be an American, but I am completely frustrated by growing power of stupidity in this great country. Fellow Americans, please, don’t forget that freedom is not for free, and freedom to be yourself is the first under fire!

I am very familiar with this and please understand there is more to the story here. One side of a story does not present the facts.

> This comment was posted from someone using a computer at the United States Government Accountability Office and listing a fake e-mail address.
>
> I’m assuming the person saying it is very familiar with Zero Tolerance Policies because the person knows nothing about what happened to me.
> Consumer’s Energy is in Michigan, GAO is in Maryland.
>
> “One side of the story does not present facts” is classic political correctness and group think. It is perfectly possible I presented the facts and all the relevant facts.
> The way that crazy policies like Zero Tolerance get put in place is because people wrongly assume that the truth is not knowable and that one person can’t be right.
> Total group think with isn’t thinking at all but just feeling and avoiding responsibility.
>
> Mark

“really need extra money so I’ve been taking 24 hour on call duty for the last 3 weeks”

… Do I really read that that you were on call for 24*7*3 = 504 hours nonstop? That would be a crazy commitment for you to take on, and a crazy thing for an employer to allow.

Forgive me, I’m used to *nix systems, but my corporate Windows XP laptop requires a password change every 60 days (I think) with 15 days notice, so I can change the password any time, but get a regular warning for the two weeks before it’s absolutely necessary. That seems fair enough. If you were locked out with no opportunity to reset your password, then your comment (taken as a “light-hearted” aside) is really, fair enough, but I have to admit that I am careful even about such comments (and, when appropriate, I do make much more strongly-worded, but clearly non-literal, comments) in a professional environment.

I understand your side perfectly; I can also, to an extent, see the other side… if the person who took your call did not clearly understand your situation, but was merely a minimum-wage call handler, they would not appreciate the overall situation, and would only understand that you had (apparently) threatened violence. In reality, we know the “big picture”, but possibly that person did not, through no fault of their own, or of your own.

I learned something on a training course a few years ago… the scenario was that the customer wanted to take a shortcut, I was a junior member, and the rest of the team were off on lunch. Go on – just do it! I answered, “We can do this, but I’ll have to warn you that (blah blah)”. I thought I’d done okay. The customer is always right, but do due diligence, and make sure that they understand the consequences.

The feedback I got, was that “hey, I’m warning you, pal” is threatening behaviour, which wasn’t at all what I had intended, but, looking back on it, I can see that it could have been seen in that way. For once – a training course from which I learned something! I didn’t realise that the word “warn” could be a loaded word…

I’m happy to use whatever slang/shortcut-phrases in email, conversations, IM, etc, only when I’m comfortable that the relationship with that person suits the language. I’ve been bitten a few times. I’m happy to say that that training session brought me up sharp, and was the worst scenario I’ve been in. I’ve still fouled up IRL, too, but hopefully I’m learning…

The other side of it, is that techie folks don’t generally have the social skills that others might have; to me, a blunt answer (“Meet at 8 for 9pm”) is ideal. To others, it must be a “Yes, we’d love to see you there; a bunch of us (Sarah, Lydia, Jon) are getting together at 8, a few more are joining us from then, and the main event starts from 9”

So, it’s not just what you say, and how you say it, it’s how it’ll be received.

Oh yeah – another story of my own. My phone’s battery was dying, but my manager (whom I did not respect, as it happens) was trying to call me. The phone kept bleeping as I tried to talk. I yelled, “Yes, I know you’re f*cking useless” to the phone, little realising that it had actually, this time, finally managed to connect the call!

Steve Parker,

Yes I was on call for 504 hours. Ordinarily things are fairly quiet at night and on weekends. People only paged me off hours it was a big deal. That day was a big deal. And the plan is for each of the 5 people (now 4) to do one week of on-call per month. A couple of the employees had big dead lines to handle, because CMS Energy changing all their (70+) existing systems and installing SAP. Then one employee’s father died. Because I was the only contractor I took up the slack.

About the password change system. I had changed it. It has to be changed in three places and it takes a day or more for it to filter through and update. So I tried to log in with my NEW password twice. Tried my old one and either that locked my account out or, when I changed it the change didn’t register and some automatic system locked my out over the weekend. The help desk women really had no clue and all she could do was unlock one of the accounts but not get all my accounts functioning. So I was unable to actually fix the real problem.

These types of problems had happened before and I had raised the issue before. When I raised the issue before I was told, “Its impossible to deal with Network Security, we all just deal with them and work around it but don’t get caught.”

I completely agree that the call center woman could take the comment wrong. Its sad but fair enough.

The problem is the Zero Tolerance Policy. Dozens of other people were “forced” to treat her wrong understanding of a figure of speech as if it were a real threat. No one said, “Look this is not a threat.” A man who is in charge of hundreds of millions of dollars, over sees hundreds of employees and makes decisions about potentially life and death matters said, “Because we can’t tell the difference between real and imagined threats we have to treat them all the same. I have no choice but to let you go.”

Total lack of responsibility.

On a related note, I see that http://begthequestion.info/faq.php contains the phrase “If he resists, a firm backhand slap should put him in his place.*”, where the “*” refers to a footnote saying “BegTheQuestion.info does not condone firm backhand slaps, and only recommends such extreme measures in jest.”

That seems to be going maybe a little bit too far in protecting themselves… However, given your experience, maybe not.

Jordi Kroon: “Yeah, because this could only happen in America,” rolls eyes.

> Very true. Zero Tolerance Policies and the Group Think that put them in place is very common in Europe.
> There is a famous case of a farmer in Britain whose home was invaded by career criminals.
> The farmer used his shotgun to defend himself and home.
> The farmer was put in jail for a very long time because of Zero Tolerance LAWS (not just policies) on gun use.

> Mark

Is this for real? :O Im very sorry for you, Mark, that sucks ! Unbelievable! Like others have said, Im so glad Im not american, that is one of the most incredible things I have ever heard! :O

> censored because something is triggering a corporate filter at Pulte Homes. Even more Zero Tolerance non-sense.
> Mark

You should pursue legal recourse for denying you any form of reasonable due process. This was obviously an arbitrary decision with NO actual thought put into its ramifications.
Even the Navy’s zero tolerance policy for drug use still rarely ends up as ZERO tolerance.

And, of course, civil law requires no rhyme nor reason to actually benefit someone.

I truly hope you can give them a good case of Stickittothemanitosis!

I have an idea. Somebody mail CMS Energy (not E-mail) the ULR for this webpage (markproffitt.com/2007/05/29/i’m-a-victim-of-zero-tolerance-policies)

Also include the line “What were you thinking?”

I wonder if they’ll look.

>
> They weren’t thinking. Just following policy.
> Mark
>