What's the worst thing that can happen if you mess up on your job?

[undeterred]

I'm asking because I see a lot of people pointing fingers already at the University Police and the University officials for not making decisions that might have protected the students after the early morning shootings.

I'm in the computer field, so on a really bad day, I might destroy data accidentally. Or take down the network for a couple of hours. Or take down a database so it can't be used again till its restored the next day. There are safeguards in place so there is a limit to how much damage I can do. I can make people angry and slow things down, but I can't really hurt anyone.

I used to work for a surgeon. On a really bad day for him, someone would die on the operating table. There are no surgeons anywhere who get to go through their whole career without having a really bad day once in a while. Sometimes someone dies who is a VIP. Sometimes someone dies because you made a mistake. Sometimes someone dies because they were hurt so badly by someone else that despite your best efforts, they died anyway. And the thing is if you're a surgeon, you have to be back in the operating room at 6AM the next day, fully confident that you can handle every operation that comes your way.

If you're in law enforcement at Virginia Tech, I imagine that today was the worst day of your life, and you'll spend the rest of your life thinking about what you might have done differently. You never got to fire a shot or save a life. You were ready, and you were there, but it was all too late. It was a really bad day. There is no way to get through a career in law enforcement without really bad days happening and no two bad days are alike.

A lot of people died today. The officers and decision makers are never going to forget this day or stop rethinking it, wishing it had turned out differently. Tragedy happened. I have to start out assuming they did the best they could with what they knew.

[Kerrytravelers]

1. The worst that could happen is my school gets audited and the auditor realize it was a human error.

I am very lucky and I know it.

[Wickerman]

2. Nice post and we certainly should hold off on judgement until

we know some of the facts - things are a little vague for all the finger pointing I've seen.

[Midlodemocrat]

17. I live here. I have friends whose kids attend Tech.

My daughter has friends there. Her best friend's brother is still waiting to hear whether or not one of his friend's will survive surgery after being shot today. Another of my friend's best friend has a daughter at Tech who saw her RA shot and killed by the gunman.

This is a tragedy and to point fingers at this stage of the game is sickening. I've seen posts ridiculing the police department, the security and the President, because don't you know, he donated money to George Allen, so therefore he's *in* on it. :eyes:

It's disgusting. People's children died today. The sentiments expressing contempt for those of us who are concerned and praying for the families instead of the Iraqis are sickening.

I have enough compassion for all. I didn't start the war in Iraq, but I could very easily be sending my daughter to Tech next year. It hits home. Places we think are safe aren't.

[Wickerman]

21. Big hug, Midlo

I can't imagine what your community has gone thru, or, is going to go thru. I do wish folks would damper the :tinfoilhat: crap just for a few days until the shock wears off, at least.

:hug:

[Eric J in MN]

3. People having great responsibilities is why we should question...

...if they're doing a good job.

We shouldn't just assume that if they mess up they will be hard on themselves, and therefore we shouldn't ask questions.

That goes for cops, doctors, and presidents.

[undeterred]

7. True

But we can't judge from someones public persona at a news conference what kind of emotional / thought process they are going through.

[darkstar]

8. Thanks to you and Eric above for the

civil discourse on this. After mourning, this it *the* underlying aspect of this that needs to be addressed in depth. No easy answers, but the question needs to be asked across our culture....

[Phillycat]

29. Amen!

Very well said.

[Stinky The Clown]

4. That's a very sane and sober sentiment ...... and very reasonable.

We all have a tendency toward knee-jerk hyperbole and histrionics. I've been listening to this story unfold all day and just now finished watching the latest (7.30 pm) news conference, after wtahcing them earlier, too.

This is nothing less than extraordinarily tragic and complicated. This is the first comment I've made on this on DU. I will withold judgement.

(BTW: K&R)

[Little Wing]

5. All I saw was dudes hiding behind trees while gunshots rang out

[Eric J in MN]

6. By "dudes" do you mean policemen? NT

NT

[Little Wing]

11. Yes

[Eric J in MN]

25. You saw video taken while the shooting was still happening? NT

NT

[youngdem]

9. I'm blaming the asshole with the gun, and that's gonna be it.

Then, I might memorialize the victims with a donation to a free mental health clinic, hoping to provide care for someone thinking of doing something similar.

I would not want to attend a university that could have prevented this. It would be a locked down, paranoid, sad place. This happens very rarely. Let's keep perspective and not destroy campuses trying to save them.

[YDogg]

13. Florida State after Bundy was locked down pretty damned tight ...

... for a few years. Then the memories subsided and security did also.

[sam sarrha]

10. if they dont have a team to take care of this possibility.. heads should roll

why didnt they just go home... have less nightmares,

[Nikia]

12. In a rare and unlikely scenario

People could die. In a more likely scenario, the customer sends back large amounts of our product as unusuable and drops our business.
I work for a food processing company in research and development and quality.
Just as I believe that it is unlikely people will die from our product, the police in this case probably thought it would be unlikely that someone would shoot so many people after shooting two other people.

[rug]

14. Someone will go to prison for life.

[blues90]

15. I can tell you horror stories about car repair shops

I worked as a manager for a large ford dealership .

Due to their constant attempt to save on labor and compete with other small companies as well as sell more work .

Here is how it worked .

They would hire someone to change oil and do what is called multi-point inspections , these are doen to check the car or truck over and then give the customer a list of needed work .

They hired people with little experience and provided no training .

I can't count the number of times the 5 techs left all the lug nut loose and the customer would come back complainig of a noise , it was a good thing the wheels did not come off . Also they forgot to put the oil in or left the filler cap off .

I had 47 techs and all sorts of customer issues to deal with daily and have two fellows who checked all cars before they left but there was no way possible for me to go around and check on loose lug nuts and this sort of thing was expressed by me many times to these techs , double check your work , you are paid by the hour not by how fast you move .

It was the general managers issue , I told him to hire only techs who were either trained on the job or had experience and pay for the experience .

Well like everything else they chose to take the chance and pay for any damage but I was the one who the complaints came to .

One would thing a major repair center would be safe a bet .

[sakabatou]

16. In my old job:

Accidenly get stabbed.

[MrSlayer]

18. Explosions and death. I'm an electrician.

I always say if a carpenter fucks up he gets a splinter, if a plumber fucks up we get wet, if we fuck up people die. Quite a dangerous gig.

[donco6]

19. I could go to prison for a long, long time.

But I could enjoy the beach until they found me.

But seriously, there's no point playing armchair quarterback - certainly not at this point, anyway. It's far, far too early to start assigning blame anywhere.

[LostInAnomie]

20. Some kids could be raped or murdered.

I work in a classroom for emotionally handicapped kids (many of which are extremely violent). They know little when it comes to restraining impulses, especially destructive ones. They can NEVER be left alone.

[Canuckistanian]

22. Maybe some stuff wouldn't work as well as advertised

Pretty lame, huh?

[FloridaJudy]

23. People could die.

I'm a retired nurse. Even if we do our best, we still lose people.

As for the cop hiding behind the tree: do we expect he'd be in front of it while trying to figure out where the shots were coming from? Caution is a good thing. It's hard to save some one else's life while suffering from a sucking chest wound yourself.

I still wonder why there seemed to be no procedures in place for dealing with violence/mass casualties. We've watched our civil rights be eroded by "Homeland Security". This is exactly the sort of situation in which authorities should be capable of minimizing harm. Homeland Security should have trained those policemen better.

I guess they're just too bloody busy making sure all our liquids are in one quart zip-lock bags before we board planes.

(editted becuz I lernd my spelling frum "Hokt on Fonix")

[undeterred]

24. Not to mention how depleted our National Guard is.

I don't believe we are one iota safer now than we were before the creation of the DHS- if anything we are less safe.

[Chomskyite]

26. If I f**k up,

I might get bad teaching evaluations. Or someone might get through my classes by cheating and then end up being incompetent as a writer.

[FloridaJudy]

27. Does that explain all the writers on Fox?

Sorry. I know that was a cheap shot, but I couldn't resist.

[tomreedtoon]

28. If Jack Bauer screws up, America will die.

If I screw up, two TV stations will go off the air and nobody will know about the oncoming hurricane (caused by the terrorists Jack Bauer is chasing) and everyone in Central Florida will die.

[Phillycat]

30. Someone could die.

I work in healthcare. That's why I'm glad that I'm tested and certified every year, and held to very high standards. ANYONE who has a job with huge consquences should be held to very high standards.

[eppur_se_muova]

31. People were quick to criticize these campus cops for "inexperience"...

...with a tone that seemed to imply "Jeez, haven't these guys ever been to a mass shooting before?". In fact, most police officers haven't, even the ones that train to deal with such things. We should be glad that we live in a society where most cops will never have to deal with anything as bad as that, and only those in the most densely populated areas have to train for so many eventualities that they include one of this nature in their training.

[etherealtruth]

32. Loss of property and life

[Horse with no Name]

33. I can kill someone.

That is the worst possible scenario for me.

[renate]

34. I totally sympathize with their decision not to cancel classes

If it had turned out to be an overreaction to a boyfriend-girlfriend situation as was originally thought, they would have created a huge logistic nightmare--rescheduling tests/quizzes, having people make work or child-care arrangements only to show up to class for no reason, having to make up that missed day of class at the end of the semester without throwing the final-exam schedule into a mess, etc, etc.

When I was in college we had a massive snowstorm that caused the university to close for the first time in decades. Universities tend not to close no matter what the weather, even when it's a known fact that driving will be dangerous for some. In comparison, yesterday was a situation that 999 times out of 1000 would be expected to be a one-event tragedy and not to spread to the campus.

It must be beyond horrible for the parents who lost children to know that with the benefit of hindsight their deaths could have been avoided, but the blame lies squarely with the killer, not with the police and college administrators who couldn't reasonably have been expected to predict this.

[DemoTex]

35. Airline pilot: Use your imagination, or read the accident reports.

Tenerife, 3/27/77
PanAm Clipper Victor 1736/KLM 4805
583 fatalities

BTW: The captain of Pan Am Clipper Victor was Victor Grubbs, from my hometown of Griffin, Georgia. He was exonerated in the NTSB investigation. According to Wikipedia, the Tenerife runway collision between two Boeing 747s in thick fog was the worst disaster in aviation history.

[slackmaster]

36. Other than getting electrocuted, I could be summarily fired at any time

I haven't passed any judgement on anyone in the VT tragedy.

[rainbow4321]

37. As a nurse..

It would be missing a critical sign/symptom and a patient dies.


The other worst thing would be to lose my license. No license = no more working as a nurse..at all. Can't really think of any other profession that I enter and make the income I currently make--least not as a newbie in a new line of work.