Barge Date:  28-04-2019

Here is a non-barge story for you

I know a woman here in Europe that works for a large company with some global reach. A very professional place. At the end of a recent vacation, she was surprised to receive a call on the Sunday night prior to her returning to work. The call was from a man that handled some legal tasks for her department, but not directly her boss; she reports to another division in the company.

He said "you have a problem to take care of on your return". Great! The story goes like this. In her absence there was a meeting with a large vendor and various company staff people including a person from my friend's department (reporting to her) and someone from the legal department, among others. During the meeting, her department colleague took exception to what the lawyer had said and proceeded to attack and ridicule this professional legal person. At this point, let me add that the lawyer is a woman and that my friend's colleague is a man. (Perhaps this is not material, but I doubt it.) There was apparently shock and embarrassment at the man's outburst from many people in the meeting.

Post meeting, the lawyer let it be known that she would not stand for this very public and undeserved humiliation, and she took steps to find a way to deal with it. Enter my friend - this was to become "her problem".

On returning to work on Monday, she proceeded to gather facts about the meeting and the outburst by her department colleague (the man reporting to her). Thus armed, she offered the following to him - today, go to the lawyer, admit your failings and beg for forgiveness, or at least apologize to her - or be fired by the end of the day. The man did nothing of the sort, and so my friend fired him.

To add to the drama, the boss of my friend said "you have just made this pile of shit your pile", i.e. you just made life for yourself worse by firing the man as you’ll have nobody to do his job while looking for a new person... and this will take time because of the required expertise needed. And with a tone that said you will get no support from "me".

Had my friend been sucked into something she had not anticipated? Had she hurt her standing? Was anyone standing with her?

But there was a happy ending for my friend as she received an email from the top management of the woman lawyer; a two word email. "Well done".

 And 1 month later a new employee was found ... a top expert who is excelling in the job!