Saturday, January 26, 2008

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first the classifieds we read

I saw this on the web while peeking over Guy's shoulder as he surfed the web:

41-year-old Marie Cooley of Jacksonville, Florida, is an architect. And last week, she was looking through the newspaper and, in the classifieds, she saw a job that looked almost EXACTLY like hers . . . complete with her boss's phone number as the contact number.

Marie concluded that she was getting CANNED from Steven E. Hutchins Architects. And she wasn't going down without taking the company down with her. So, late on Sunday night, Marie broke in to her office, went on to the company's server . . . logged in with her own account . . . and deleted SEVEN YEARS worth of architectural drawings. The value of those files is around $2.5 MILLION.

Here's the problem. Marie WASN'T getting fired. The ad was running because her boss's wife ALSO runs a different architecture firm . . . and SHE was looking to get a person on her staff who was like Marie.

So even though Marie wasn't SUPPOSED to get fired . . . after she deleted $2.5 MILLION worth of the company's files, she DID get fired. And even worse . . . she was also ARRESTED for damaging computer equipment and sabotage.

Wow, what a bad idea, Marie. When you think you're being canned, either confront someone or start spiffing up your resume so can you can get a new job. Although, what this article didn't explain is what marie was doing scoping the classifed job ads anyway. Inquiring minds want to know.

It also occurs to me that I've been at DA a little over 7 years. For me to do what Marie did would be to delete every single project I've worked on in my architectural career. Way bad news pour moi.

More sudden thoughts on this: DA backs up its computer files on a weekly and monthly basis. Plus, once a project is over, we archive the project--emails, drawings, documents, paper drawings, shop drawings and submittals/samples of casework and metal window frames, everything--on a server that can only be deleted by the head of IT, and not easily, I might add. What kind of crackerjack software safety propcols does Marie's office have in place? Could they not assume something like this could happen? At the very least, wouldn't you back up all your work somewhere in case some horrid computer virus burned through your server and computers? Marie might've been taking-shots-out-of-a-bell-tower crazy for doing what she did, but it's not like they made it hard for her to do.

3 comments:

Miss Kitty said...

Good Lord. What a fucked-up situation. [sigh] Had the poor woman only checked into what was going on, she'd still have a job and her freedom.

Anonymous said...

You haven't considered that she might be an Arch-i-tect AND head of IT... Some places suck worse than others. Rockford!

Anonymous said...

How sad, The lady in question is ruled by the fear that she is no good. The expectation of being unacceptable caused her to assume that she was being fired when in fact she was not. Her belief in her unacceptability kept her from taking the risk of asking her boss about the ad. If you expect rejection you usually will get it. What happened to this lady is tragedy but she did make the decision to destroy the files. She lives in a prison far more terrible than any physical prison can be.