Bad situation made worse

[Broomjockey]

And go after your buttmunch of a manager by contacting the guy back and giving him the managers name and address and his car model and saying you were told to say what you did by your manager.

Hey look! Revenge! We don't condone that here, and I don't wanna see anything like this recommended by anyone. *glares around*

[Fryk]

I get that part, AccountingDrone. And as a fellow anti-social/misanthrope/whatever you want to call it, I sympathize. But surely if they send his ass to jail, he wouldn't be able to play, either. And if not jail, then wouldn't fines cut into his gaming budget?

This thread reminds me that I need to get better games.

[reimero]

I get that part, AccountingDrone. And as a fellow anti-social/misanthrope/whatever you want to call it, I sympathize. But surely if they send his ass to jail, he wouldn't be able to play, either. And if not jail, then wouldn't fines cut into his gaming budget?

This thread reminds me that I need to get better games.

Note 1: I know nothing of the particulars of this case.
Note 2: I am not a lawyer.

That said, my hunch is that what actually happened was that this guy made the violent threat/statement in online chat (a no-no), which the company decided to deal with in a rather visible manner (which is their right.) If they lock his account for "violating the terms of service" or whatever, there's nothing to prevent him from creating a new account and using various proxies and IP masks to get around those blocks. On the other hand, if the local prosecutor gets notified, that changes things.

In a case like that, it's generally going to be an open-and-shut, slam-dunk case, the perp is going to know he's in waaaaaaaay over his head, and will usually be willing to do what he can to make it go away. My guess is that he had to go to court and plead guilty to misdemeanor intimidation (or some such) and pay a modest fine and court fees (I'm thinking in the $200-500 range), and there's probably a deal in place where his record is expunged if he keeps his nose clean for a year.

As for why his account wasn't locked... well... when a guy is in chat saying, "don't talk like that, I did and I had my court date yesterday...", that's a heck of a lot more effective than threats of having your account locked.

[KitterCat]

I don’t want to derail the tread, but I’ve noticed that a lot of you will not call the police when your being threatened. Even when they've got your full name and have figured out where your workplace or home is. Instead you go to your supervisors. Why? I mean come on, asking a lot of supervisors is like asking another bully if its ok to tell on the first bully who threatened to beat you up, so why bother? Just call the police and at least have a report filed. If your job place does nothing about the threat you at least have a paper trail showing they were informed and aided in creating a hostile work environment.

[trailerparkmedic]

I don’t want to derail the tread, but I’ve noticed that a lot of you will not call the police when your being threatened. Even when they've got your full name and have figured out where your workplace or home is. Instead you go to your supervisors. Why? I mean come on, asking a lot of supervisors is like asking another bully if its ok to tell on the first bully who threatened to beat you up, so why bother? Just call the police and at least have a report filed. If your job place does nothing about the threat you at least have a paper trail showing they were informed and aided in creating a hostile work environment.

I wonder if that's because people fear retaliation from their job.

At one of the call center jobs I had, we were employed by Company A but answered calls for Company B. We were located in Tiny Town, which was many states away from Company B's headquarters. One of my friends at the call center got a threatening phone call that was especially creepy because they specified that they were going to come to the Company A, Tiny Town call center and do something (can't remember what, exactally, it's been a few years).

So, being rather frightened, she reports the threatening call to her supervisor. Next thing she knows, she's being dragged into HR and they're examining everything in her file, including an accusation that had been disproven a year earlier. They kept questioning her about why she reported the call and why she had been involved in a weird situation a year earlier. Our only guess is that they wanted to prove that she was untrustworthy so that they could justify not doing anything about the threat.

Company A was far from classy, but that really took the cake.

[Broomjockey]

I don’t want to derail the tread, but I’ve noticed that a lot of you will not call the police when your being threatened.

Not to derail it further, but there's many reasons why that could be, including but not limited to

- without a supervisor's support, you're going to be on your own while dealing with the police, and the amount of time that can take up can be enough to get you fired for missing work in some cases.

- standing company policy to inform supervisors before authorities are involved.

- sometimes, you know it's not a legitimate threat, but you shouldn't have to take that shit anyway, so the police can't really get involved, but the company should do something.

- word against word, so getting the police involved would be non-productive, but since the burden of proof to your supervisor can be less, there's more chance of a positive resolution.

Now, further discussion is an awesome topic for Fratching, and this now makes the second time I've had to say to stay away from Fratching topics in this thread. There won't be a third.

[bsaana]

The call center I worked at almost 3 years ago, and damn I kinda miss it (awesome company), our phones had a red "Emergency" button. You only pushed it when you had abusive callers. It would flag the recording to be kept for a long period of time, and alert the supervisors, the tier 2 techs (only higher ones there were the engineers), and the managers/company heads. They would then monitor the call. According to policy all you had to do was give the caller one warning not to be abusive/cuss and you could immediately drop the call.

I got lucky and had none of those. I had one guy cuss, but out of surprise that his printer could do something neat (automatic duplex). "Son of a bitch - it worked"

At this place, when the director and others had their doors shut - they did not have the radio on - they were monitoring calls. If my trainer hadn't warned us about it, I would have been kinda frightened when she came out of the office and talked with us about the calls (I was also on the "row from hell" as it was the closest to the office of one of the highest people there).

For the ops situation.... I just can't express it.... Not because its violent, but just that it really bugs me. Must be my small town roots showing (I am now about 2000 some miles from that call center).