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Most unprofessional experience at work?

Check out my previous rants. With so many, it would be difficult to pick just one.

Not sure if I've told this one before. 'Caleb' was part of a team responsible for migrating financial data from a legacy (DOS-based) system to our new system.
Because of our elevated security (and the data being plain text) Caleb had access to the entire company's payroll (including VP salary, bonuses, etc).
Solidifying my belief that that salaries should be private between the employee and the employer, Caleb discovered he was making considerably less than his peers (even a few devs that he had seniority over), and the green monster 'Jealosly' took over his professionalism. Caleb decided to tell everyone making the same and less than him, the salaries of the other (higher paid) devs, managers and VPs.
Nobody understood at the time, but these folks started to behave erratically , like showing up late, making comments like "Why should I document that? Make 'money bags' over there do it", etc and so on.

Soon at review time, Caleb decided to use his newly discovered ammunition to 'barter' for a higher salary by telling the manager if he didn't make $$$, he would send an email to the entire company containing everyone's salary.

The manager fired Caleb on the spot and escorted him out the building (Caleb never had chance to follow thru with that threat)

When word got out about Caleb's firing (and everybody knew why), those other employees started showing up on time and stopped complaining about doing their job.

Comments
  • 2
    @Ubbe YES. And no, salaries shouldnt have to be private. People should respect when others earn more because they contribute more, and should also be able to tell if they are being taken advantage of.
  • 1
    @eval Sorry, one small correction here - "respect when others make more IF they contribute more".
  • 1
    @dindin thats what i tried to say ;)
  • 0
    As a person from a country where all tax records are public - he should instead call his peers to unionise and take it as a public grievance. That's what we have labour laws for.
  • 0
    @Ubbe

    > I think it is very unprofessional to have a salary policy that causes this kind of conflict.

    Couldn't agree more. Unfortuantly, even the best of our species is susceptible to petty feelings like jealousy. It happens. Our mgmt understand it's adverse affect on moral, productivity, and the dangers when jealousy gets out of hand. The good part is we have a transparent/consistent process for raises+bonues. You do XYZ, you get XYZ% percent raise/bonus. Only do X, you only get X%. The simplicity is brilliant and most of all, fair.
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