Letters to the Editor
mattwa33186
Published Letters: 432 Editor's Choice: 45
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That depends
[Read the article: The al-Marri decision]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Another terrorist attack here might be just what GW needs. Unless of course, and I know this is a long shot, the media does their job.
If that were to happen, Katie Couric could spend hours pointing out how the attack could never have happened if only the government had taken minimal security precautions. Wolf Blitzer could delight us with an endless parade of real security experts who could explain in excrutiating detail how the Bush administration has done not one single thing to make Americans safer. Maybe we could come up with some kind of TV extravaganza where journalists from everywhere would jump all over people from the highest levels of government to find out where all that money that supposedly got spent on security actually went.
And if we got really lucky, maybe all these newspeople would look at each other when they were done and say "You know, this actually doing our job thing is kind of fun! We should do it some more!"
But you are probably right, it would turn into another Bush love-fest and the media would have a week long special mourning the fact that our great protector has to leave us after only 2 short terms.
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Philadelphia
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Haven't been there in a long time, so maybe it's better now, but my worst experience was there. Young, broke, and full of lust, I flew in there to meet the object of my desire on the cheapest airline I could find, which at the time was AirTran (my nominee for worst airline ever).
It was clean. It was well lit. Lots of little shops for those who are into that. Nice hotel. But what was amazing was that the terminals were built end to end, connected by a narrow corridor that meandered for what felt like miles. And of course the cheaper the airline, the farther the gate was from the end where you could actually leave the building (or find your room). I came in at the second gate from the end.
Midnight, a group of 100 zombies staggering past an endless panorama of closed shops and empty gates, dreaming of a bite to eat or a drink of water, constantly taunted by signs telling me the hotel was just ahead, the various zigs and zags making it impossible to see more than 50 feet as I grew increasingly sure that there was no hotel, that this was all an elaborate scheme to lure people to the City of Brotherly Love for some unknown, but surely evil, purpose...
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I'm a little confused
[Read the article: I know my co-worker's evil secrets -- because I was his therapist!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Don't they teach you this stuff in therapist school?
And no disrespect to Cary, but what kind of professional therapist writes to an internet advice columnist when confronted with a matter of professional ethics? Don't you have a mentor or ethics board or someone better qualified to turn to?
If this is for real, I think you know the answer to your question already and you don't like it. You want to keep your job but you can't work with this guy so you are looking for an excuse to out him. Which is understandable, but less than I would expect from a trained professional.
Anyway, nothing you know about him matters, at all. The company hired him based on his expected performance. They will fire him if he is as bad as you say he is. No amount of schmoozing will allow him to keep working there if he actually does harm to people as you seem to think he will. If you work for a good company, the harm will likely be unfortunate but they will have processes in place to take care of the damage. So while I sympathize, you have no ground to stand on from a work standpoint. Talking shit about him to your new boss based on your previous experiences with him would be unethical if you weren't his therapist.
It was his old boss's job to give him a bad reference if he was a bad employee, not yours. If they wimped out because they failed to document his transgressions or just as a matter of policy, that sucks but it doesn't put the right or responsibility on you.
While you seem to know for certain that this guy is a snake, a charlatan, what have you, I don't see anything in your letter to indicate that this has affected his job performance - you just think it might. Lot's of people with personal issues and distasteful habits go to work every day and are complete professionals. It really does sound like you simply don't like this guy and don't want to be around him.
So as for your personal dread of working with him, the solution is obvious - quit. Get a job somewhere he doesn't work. Or suck it up, cash your checks, and deal with it. Just like anyone else who is forced to work with someone they find intolerable would have to.