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A lot of people in IT tend to be neurodiverse in some way. Part of that can include not knowing how to handle social interactions. Combine that with someone playing a prank because they think it might be funny, and it sounds like grounds for a complaint for bullying.
As for allowing someone to be unsupervised in a prison, there would be questions if someone got physically attacked, or Carl started handing out contraband to the prisoners.
I agree that a lot of people in IT are neurodiverse, but I also think that there is a common trend in lower and middle management that the workers should not be encouraged to develop their EQ. If IT workers were encouraged to develop their EQ and deal with themselves, their self-image and other people more effectively, it would be very good for the worker. BUT it may make life harder for their supervisors since they could find self-aware workers a bit more difficult to bully and push around.
I strongly recommend that if you're in IT, work on your EQ. Find out more about yourself, learn how to deal with other personality types, and you will be a LOT happier.
Or worse, as I do, carry a knife where ever you go. I had to take the locking collar off to comply with UKs stupid rule that it can't be locking (meaning I now have the ability to accidentality cut my finger off). Just image being stuck in that situation, having a fear for your life (not knowing what is going on), then stabbing someone to death as self defence. Then ending up in as an inmate because of IT stupid prank.
You'd get thrown out of the prison and your job for attempting to take a knife in, you'd likely also be arrested and possibly charged.
I suppose natural selection always finds a way, if you somehow managed it and were then stupid enough to try and use it against a gang of prisoners you'd not need to worry about being an inmate, your family might miss you though
That's not the point. The point is, you don't put someone in a situation as a "prank" where they may fear for their life or feel they need to act in self-defence. Obviously the knife wouldn't be "smuggled" in, but the point still stands. An example
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55982131
One place I worked you had a tour of the entire building if you worked in an engineering or IT role. Start of one week a tour took place as normal but by the end of the week one of the inductees had left. That wasn’t normal and rumours started circulating about what had happened. The unnamed inductee had complained that they had been hazed by the person leading the tour. HR had investigated and found that a standard tour had taken place and there was no hazing. It eventually turned out that this person had compained about deliberately being taken into various ‘dangerous’ rooms on their tour to scare them. This included the power room, the generator room and a room with restricted height etc. Why they found this to be hazing we had absolutely no flipping idea. You had to know where they were in case you had to visit them to work in there.
As was pointed out it’s probably not a good idea to accuse your new boss (on the first day at the company) of hazing you when they aren’t. Anonymous because it’s possible I still work here.
While solving an IT issue I once came across a guy in a -18C cold store in underpants and boots wrapped to a post with pallet wrapping 'cling film'.
I went straight to the Site Manager who said "It's his birthday, they'll cut him out in a few minutes!"
Had they placed something between the unfortunate guy's back and the post then it would not have been so bad, but without he could have suffered permanent harm.
Being an H&S team member at my IT based site in the same group, I went to my Site Manager to report what I had seen.
The Cold Store Site Manager left by 'mutual consent' in a few days.
Yes, I am expecting down ticks. But banter is one thing - physical harm is another!
I fully agree with the displayed aversion against such abuse, and I gave you an upvote for obvious black humour.
Being against a very bad situation but still being able to make (very bad) jokes about it is the essence of black humour, like Stuart Francis'' "We Canadians like to go clubbing, but when we run out of seals.."
Partner told me of a case in the North East (not where she worked, fortunately) where they used to put a compressed air line up the legs of people's work gear to turn them into "Michelin Man". They managed to (literally) blow one apprentice up, killing him.
I've also heard of people being hung by their "safety harness" from the forks of a lift truck and left there for hours.
Yes, as a caver I am very well aware of the issue. It's why my group always take an extra rope, long enough for the longest pitch in the cave, and other rescue gear. Given them we can always rescue someone incapacitated on the rope - sometimes upwards, mostly downwards. And yes, we do practice this every couple of years, first with a heavy bag (to illustrate issues that might occur) and then a live casualty (you can't really simulate having to climb up the rope and over the casualty - rescues can only happen from above) .
Yes, I recall some of the safety inductions when I started as an apprentice maaany years ago. One of them was about airlines - up the leg of clothing is one thing, but it can easily lead to air in the bloodstream (which can lead to an embolism and death or serious injury); another risk pointed out was that the bowels can't cope with much pressure before they rupture, and then the victim dies a lingering death from the combination of physical trauma and sepsis.
It's also sobering to remember that one of the sessions was from the country road safety officer on motorbike safety - the business generally lost around 1 or 2 apprentices/year to accidents on those. But I do recall him doing the "hands up if you ride a motorbike" (probably about 1/2 of us), "hands up if you've had an accident" (IIRC probably over half of them still up). Then he'd go round the room asking about them, and one poor lad must have wished the world would open up and swallow him. His accident ? He rode into a skip (we chuckled a bit). "Was it dark and the skip unlit ?", "no, it was daylight" - at which point we of course showed no sympathy and burst out laughing. In town there's a location where there's some steps from one (very wide) road up to another in a housing estate, he'd dropped a mate off at the bottom of the steps, then just done a U-turn into the skip at the other side of the road - at which point, we were properly laughing.
Not long ago, due to the nature of the site I work at, we all had to do some additional training before being allowed in any of the production areas. When it came to energised systems (so that's lecky, compressed air/gasses, hydraulics, steam, we have them all here) the guy briefing us had some "grim" photos - in particular, the hydraulic fluid in use does rather nasty things to the body, so getting even a small amount injected into (say) a hand from a high pressure leak can lead to losing a whole arm if not treated quickly enough.
I once did fire training where the guy giving the talk decided it was appropriate to show a video of the Bradford Football disaster. He kept on pointing out that a lot of people not in the immediate vicinity didn't bother to move and it didn't end well for them and as such you should get out ASAP.
Definitely NOT hazing, that.
My fire extinguisher training back in the 1990s came with a viewing of a fire spread video.
A living room with drapes, wallpaper, comfy chair, and smoke alarm (and one glass wall) was set up, and the comfy chair was ignited with a small electrical heater simulating a lit cigarette.
It took rather less than a minute from the time the first curls of smoke were visible until THE ENTIRE ROOM flashed over into a single fireball. (Flashover is what you get when the superheated combustion products that collect at ceiling height exceed the flash point of, e.g., the drapery. Everything just explodes into flaming hell all at once.)
We'll just say that the lesson was learned, and has lasted.
Drifting off topic, but I well recall the time at our work when some American manager decided to introduce himself on an all-hands call by saying he wanted the sort of person who, on finding fires, put them out themselves rather than calling the fire brigade. Which at once reminded me of public information films where people who try to do that end up incapacitated before they've even managed to fill their bucket.
My Fire Marshall training, a good few years ago now, was simply--If you are between a small fire ( a litter bin was mentioned) and the exit with an accessible extinguisher to hand you may attempt to extinguish the fire, if you've had the training .
Else just get out etc.
What you don't do is stand fighting a small fire that's between you and the door- if you can get past it just go!
(This is also why there are rules about keeping exits free of inflammable items!)
They do that every Fall on one or the other college campus in town, early in the semester. Build and furnish a 3-walled mock dorm in a wide open area. Large crowd of student spectators. Local fire department truck at ready. Video recording starts, with clock showing seconds elapsed. Something small touches off. Presenter narrates what's happening to the air and temperature, the point early on when you could no longer survive. Under two minutes and the whole room is gone. The fire truck turns on the hoses, douses the smoking ruins.
Sobering.
When I joined a tyre fitting company, which dealt with both private cars and trucks, I was shown a safety video in which it was explained in graphic detail what damage could be done by compressed air. The final message was make sure you are nowhere near a truck tyre when first inflating it, if it is on a three piece rim which has not been properly seated, it can explode. The final frame of the film showed a close-up of the ceiling of the fitting bay, with a perfect imprint in blood of the fitter who had been propelled over 20 feet into the air and stopped by said ceiling. He died.
Oh yes, split rims are deadly if the locking ring isn't properly seated. Many places have a cage to out the assembly in before inflating - there'll still be a big bang, and the cage may well be somewhat out of shape, but it should stop large objects impacting anyone.
I thought you might have been given a garbled report of an incident that happened in another hemisphere (and fatally), but from trying to track "it" down in Google, this is happening a lot, still.
I assume that pointing this apparatus -at- somebody can be almost as dangerous as putting it -into- someone.
Don't do it.
Compressed air inflation of skin has shown up in more than one CSI/911/police procedural TV show, probably at least a little because of real life stories like that. If it's just clothing they're inflating, that could be fun if done carefully. But the failure mode is 'oops, we got it under the skin and did permanent damage'.
TL;DR: Don't do it, the difference between 'fun clothing expansion' and 'dangerous under the skin air injection' is too slim.
Totally agree.
—18°C cold rooms: typically fan forced and have panic buttons.
Having worked fully clothed in a lab one, I know how quickly you can become hypothermic and lose fine motor control and suffer confusion. It is terrifying.
If the victim suffered from a cardiac infirmity such as an arrhythmia, the physical stress of extreme cold could have precipitated a fatal cardiac arrest.
Definitely homicide. Depending on your jurisdiction might be murder but definitely manslaughter. (Reckless and foreseeable.)
I too worked in a place with large cold rooms, and also did field work in the Polar regions. Because of that, I had a three-day first aid course, which included treatment for hypothermia. The good thing is that the mantra "You're not dead until you're warm and dead" is true - but the down side is that warming a hypothermic person up is a difficult and dangerous procedure, with a high probability of heart attacks if the body warms up too rapidly. Also, hypothermic people become irrational, and often feel too hot despite being actually too cold, resulting in paradoxical undressing. You DON'T mess around with walk in freezers of cold rooms!
No downvotes from me. Having a bit of fun that doesn't actually harm anyone (least of all the victim) is fine, but as soon as it crosses into potential physical harm it's a definite "hell no". That Cold Store site manager deserved what he got. And I hope anyone else involved in that little incident got an ear full as well.
The main problem with "having a bit of fun that does no harm" is that what would be harmless to one person is not necessarily harmless to another, especially when mental health is concerned. There is a fine line between "fun" and bullying, so if in doubt, best not, yeah?
No downvote here.
I've had the 'pranks' pulled on me, (yeah it was the 'goto the stores and ask for a long weight' one... apart from the 1/2 mile walk in the sunshine to the stores its not one to worry about)
But I make it clear to any operators/ apprentices/PFYs that any physical pranks will not be tolerated. and the boss agrees. and besides... if anyone does give my ex-PFY any physical abuse, her 6'6" other half will tear the abuser into tiny pieces and then stamp them.
Physical abuse = pranking using physical items.... hiding tools/stuff/personal equipment or altering notes or programs (thats a very big no no in our game), fun and games with air/hydraulic hoses (previously covered in comments), basically , the sort of stuff that can hurt, or result in unwanted downtime eg a cell is down for rebuild,you've got 2 hrs for the reset and some asshole has hidden the robot grippers you sorted out into the tool kit yesterday.....
This is all-around horrible.
First of all, hazing is abuse. Self-perpetuating abuse, as hazers need newcomers to become hazers too (lest they are forced to admit to themselves that they're abusers). It's not fun, it does not create bonding, it's just harmful. If something like that happened to me, I'd drop the job instantly. Might even consider legal action, depending on how it goes.
Secondly, the inmates are human beings. They are not the monkeys in your personal circus. Spend years basically telling them to their faces that you don't want them to be part of civilized society, don't act so surprised when they get out and immediately turn to crime again.
In reply to your comment of "Hazing is abuse. Still, I wouldn't classify this as hazing."
From the article:
"Some started making obscene remarks. Others removed some clothing and propositioned him."
And as Filippo said, above:
"...the inmates are human beings. They are not the monkeys in your personal circus"
It certainly sounds like abuse to me, on quite a few levels.
If the inmates were asked/made to act like that, it's definitely abuse.
If they're the sort of people who are known for acting like that and the hazer was taking advantage of that, it's borderline abuse but I probably wouldn't act on it. (although if the genders were reversed I would, so perhaps I need a rethink)
Having a civilian unescorted in a restricted area however... THAT deserves punishment.
> If the inmates were asked/made to act like that, it's definitely abuse
The inmates would likely be aware of the situation, easily spotting the "fresh meat", and would also know that their joining in would gain them approval from the hazers, which included some guards.
It may seem low key, but doing anything to gain approval from the guards, and from the other prisoners: that is a coercive environment.
Basic mistakes?
Care to enlighten those of us without deep experience of the environment? Are the orange clad not told to stand aside? Were there no mainframes in use by any US prisons in the 1990s? Were US police departments forbidden from sharing IT staff with prisons?
Seriously, you can't just make that accusation without even bothering to provide a single shred of detail; this isn't the forum for the Guantanamo Newsletter so there really is no expectation of shared experience or even common knowledge.
I have often found Jake's posts to be on point and informative (I don't agree with his assessment here, but there we go), the poster I have found to be a consistent bullshitter more often than not, is Anonymous Coward (and a couple of far right trolls that haunt the forum, I shan't name them, but we all know who they are).
The story does say that the prison was run by the police department, not the local DoC, and Carl was directed to the holding section, both of which would indicate it was not for convicted/sentenced prisoners and, as such, would likely have both male and female guests. Also, it didn't actually mention male prisoners anywhere.
it doesn't mention any male section.
just that he was directed to a section of recently arrested female prisoners. the entire place could have been a female prison.
I agree it is implied that he was in a male area - but it never explicitly says so. I know I assumed it was a male prison to start with - but on a reread it is not clear.
Sounds to me more like you have no experience of workplace environments decades ago. Things that outrage people now were commonplace back then, including hazing rituals and as those things go this is actually one of the milder ones I have seen or heard about at the time.
If you are going to work in a restricted area of any sort, absolutely insist on being escorted to the work area, on being supervised at all times while performing the task, and escorted from the area. And having a record of the whole process (who, what, where and when) would also be advisable.
If the chap† supervising wants to skive off for a slash/fag either join him or insist on his waiting until his replacement takes over, or on being escorted off the site until supervision can be provided.
If the employer finds you are too much trouble, there are a lot more organisations that take physical security seriously than those that don't.
When the merde truly hits the ventilateur, lax organisations are notorious for assigning blame to the innocent whose only crime is not being sensibly paranoid.
† chap/he could be chapette/she but generally women seem to take this stuff more seriously and have no tolerance for hazing for obvious reasons.
I often worked under supervision - to the level that they followed you into the toilets and stood outside the cubicle! (To listen for hidden communications devices being used.)
If anyone doesn't take their responsibility seriously, then they shouldn't be given the responsibility.
The rules for escorting visitors on our site are "interesting". Officially we are not supposed to let an escortee out of our sight, but we are allowed to escort up to 4 people. I think the letter of the rules doesn't get applied when it comes to toilet breaks - especially if it's mixed sexes in the group.
Toilets tend to only have one entrance, and it's fairly obvious when you take a suspiciously long time. Observing the stall/room should be enough, especially if the escortee has been observed directly at all other times. (Depends on the nature of the business, of course.)
Much like working on an Air Force SAC base back in the 80's and 90's.
When I had to go to the flight line there was always two guys with M16's to "escort" me to the required location. And if you had to go to the head(restroom) you soon noticed that there were no doors on the individual stalls within.
chap/he could be chapette/she but generally women seem to take this stuff more seriously and have no tolerance for hazing for obvious reasons
And what "obvious reasons" might they be ? I've worked in female dominated environments, and trust me, the women can be worse than the men on pretty well any measure of better/worse. In some ways, they can be worse because they know there's more tolerance - for example, if a bunch of men make lewd comments to the fresh meat woman then that's sexual harassment; but switch it round, and in many places it's just "banter". It shouldn't be, but that's how it is.
As an example of how there is still (OK, it's a few years old now, but attitudes haven't changed all that much) a difference in attitude, it takes all the way down to this post for someone to point out that things would have been different had it been men attacking a woman.
As a student* I had a summer job in the development lab of a firm making consumer electronics. The workers in the factory next door were almost all female. There was a standing instruction that under no circumstances were we to go into the factory alone; we should have at least one other male engineer with us and if possible be accompanied by a factory supervisor and shop steward.
* yes it was a long time ago.
Being escorted:
A school for the uneducationable kids in Taunton & being locked in a class for my own safety, while I worked.
A girls secure unit outside Taunton, as myself & a colleague arrived & just getting out, a jam sandwich screamed to a halt inches behind us & plod rushed in to the building like they were hunting donuts as two of the inmates were apparently intent on killing each other.
Police custody areas & watching a scene on CCTV where a killer refused to come out of his cell, after being arrested for a road rage incident Saturday night (Plymouth) & expecting things to "kick off" in getting him out of his cell.
The local prison in Southern Alberta:
Escorted by a female civilian worker, doing one deployment a couple of the female prisoners stuck their heads into the "hobby room" I was working in & promptly told to go on your way, I asked if they were "sniffing" around me as a new face (& English accent, which does open some things other than doors).
"Don't flatter yourself" she said, "they were more likely interested in me, they go like that in here after a while".
Same day as that, deploying in the main office, where a couple of female trustee's were emptying bins, the fabric covered office cubicles had exceptionally high walls about 10', the trustee's obviously talking "for my benefit" on the other side of them, along the lines of "caged heat" & that they had a friend on the outside able to enjoy that sort of male attention, only for the other to add that one is waiting for a wedding ring before she enjoys any of those attentions.
Deploying in the greenhouse central control room, a prisoner was being given "weekend leave" that meant he had to return on Christmas Day, while he "discussed" the options\repercussions of if he didn't return on that day & how much of a "blind eye" would be applied. After he left, they started discussing the likely hood of him not reporting back on the 25th.
Icon - Rather appropriate given the last paragraph.
A few years ago, I was tasked with replacing a part in a server that lived in a police station, with said police station being on a nuclear registered site.
I already had a pass to go on site, but it took around 3 months to get permission to go into the police station to do the job.
I arrived at the designated time on the designated day, met my contact, who showed me into the room where I'd be working, and things became a little clearer.
On the wall to my right was every single incoming copper or fibre cable to the site. I could have cut any single one from that room. Or all of them. In the (doorless) cabinet to the right of the server rack was the relays that controlled every single Barrier Turnstile on site. To the left was the unlocked cupboard with the tasers, and on the left wall were a number of firearms.
I was most uncomfortable being left alone in that room...
When I was in middle school, we had a field trip to the local women's prison. Not sure why.
Note that my school was a private one, operated by a Lutheran church. It's why I'm atheist today.
Anyway, our supervising teacher was very handsome, and I learned a LOT of things that day, including the fact that a human can actually turn "beet red", and that redheads can be redheaded all over, so to speak.
No idea how they thought this was a was a good idea, except it showed just how sheltered and out of touch with reality the school staff were.
On a more educational level, we once went to a jury trial in a murder case, after being instructed that anyone that let out so much as a peep during the proceedings would suffer dearly for it.
The case was declared a mistrial after the knife was passed around the jury for inspection with a label saying "murder weapon" and not "alleged murder weapon" and this left a very deep impression on me. It gave me quite a lot to think about for a very long time.
knife was passed around the jury for inspection with a label saying "murder weapon" and not "alleged murder weapon"
Even "alleged" would be a bit much. A label should ust state where it was found. Even if the pathologist removes it from the body the officer receiving it should just label it as "Received from doctor $NAME". Whoever was responsible should have known better.
Were these female prisoners going to proposition this guy whatever happened or did the guards inform them before the fact?
"Listen ladies, you're still awaiting sentencing so the law may consider you innocent yet, but while you're in here you're to act promiscuous and outrageous for our enjoyment"?
If this happened during wartime there'd be a tribunal at the Hague.
That or boredom leads to extreme behaviour - military bunkrooms with names like "the zoo" where outrageous bs was positively encouraged and this at an obstensibly upstanding British military officer training college.....
Anyone who has served may well know which branch of the UK armed forces I am talking about here....
Years ago. Early days of Point-of-sale systems. Installing in a Greek restaurant that is known for its live entertainment. I am upstairs, in the office, inputting some final menu programming touches on the main PC.
Did you know belly dancers have no inhibitions?
Turns out the office doubled as the dressing room. It took all my professional effort to focus on the job in front of me, while she got prepared for another day in her professional career.
The title refers to "strange places" (on one's body, implied) to receive and wear a tattoo, but it could be something about the design instead. Or, both - what and where.
Groucho Marx sang about "Lydia the Tattooed Lady". I suspect that the lyric varied depending on the audience.
The Two Ronnies described a tattooed man who also went for art reproductions, "with a Constable under each arm... and the inscrutable smile of the Mona Lisa becomes a broad grin whenever he sits down."
It wasn't a prison, but a hospital. Long ago in my support days for a computer reseller a coworker and I got lost in the basement of a hospital. While searching for a storage room for some computers to setup and configure we turned a corner to find a hallway with two doctors in full scrubs. In front of them was a gurney with a "person" under a sheet. One of the doctors shouted at us asking what the heck we were doing there and to get the heck out. We turned and almost ran. Learned to ask better directions there in the future.
Back in the 70s I worked for a while in a factory and was sent down to the blacking shop (staffed by a lot of middle aged women) to ask for "two black balls please" - and indeed did get them - which was a hell of a surprise to a young teenager. After that though, they were nice as pie to me - just what happened in those days I suppose. A mate of mine went to work in a "logistics" warehouse, on his first lunchbreak he went and opened his sandwich box to find someone had curled a large turd out on top of his lunch - it never happened again - a rite of passage, I guess
