In my dotage, when people just embarking on careers ask me for advice about work, I always recommend being so versatile as to be irreplaceable. In any sort of work situation, be the guy or woman who knows where the key to the paper towel dispenser is hidden, where the files are (and where they should be!), how to order supplies, and so on.
I heard the story about a radio station engineer who made such a complicated bowl of spaghetti out of the wiring for the transmitter that the top brass said, "We can't let him go! He's the only one who knows how to fix it if we break down."
Job security. It's a wonderful thing.
Now comes this story from Newton, Mass, where a former city employee just doesn't seem to give a fig about the police website.
Fig. Newton. Follow?
Newton is a suburb of Boston. The mayor, Ruthanne Fuller, said they used to have an employee working as the police department information technology director. He threw a monkey wrench into the works and took down the PD website sometime this summer. The website was set up so that when you clicked on it, you got a message saying to "call Mayor Fuller and ask her to restore it!"
What to do? The employee has total access to the website and refuses to release it to the city, forcing the town to set up a new PD website and shut down the old one.
The mayor told the Boston Globe that the employee shut down “a vital resource for the residents of the city of Newton.” The unnamed worker told the city that he was leaving the job back in March, but lodged a complaint over being denied $137,000 worth of compensatory time.
The city refused to pay him back, so he took the website with him when he ankled out the door. Initially, he had said that he was “disheartened by the city’s representation of the facts in this matter” but would work with the city to resolve the problem.
That didn't work out so well. Add to the advice above: never leave a job without security!
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