1,001 Facts That Will Scare the S#*t Out of You: The Ultimate Bathroom Reader (35 page)

“‘Desk Rage’ on the Rise,” HR Business and Legal Reports, December 14, 2001,
www.hr.blr.com
.

240

FACT :
Workplace bullying affects
25 to 30 percent of employees
at some time during their careers.
Instead of lunch money, they take your parking spot.

Jeanna Bryner, “Strange News, Study: Office Bullies Create Workplace ‘Warzone’,” LiveScience, October 31, 2006,
www.livescience.com
.

241

FACT :
In March 2009, a Louisiana high-school teacher was arrested for obscenity after three students and another teacher witnessed him
masturbating in a classroom
.
I guess he hadn’t heard: spanking in schools was outlawed years ago.

“Higgins Teacher Arrested For Obscenity,”
WWLTV.com
, March 20, 2009,
www.wwltv.com
.

242

FACT :
A
New York Times
study of rampage killings found that although most perpetrators of workplace massacres made specific threats or exhibited clear warning signs,
these warnings were ignored or dismissed
.
Office Droid i: “Someone left a decapitated animal head on my desk.” Office Droid 2: “Really? Somebody wrote ‘DIE’ in blood on my office door.” Office Droid 1: “Hmm, weird. Hey, wanna go get a smoothie?” Office Droid 2: “Sure!”

Katherine M. Ramsland, Inside The Minds Of Mass Murderers: Why They Kill (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005).

243

FACT :
In 2008, a factory worker in Henderson, Kentucky killed his supervisor and six employees at the plant where he worked after getting into an argument about
not using his cell phone on the assembly line and not wearing safety goggles
.
The worker shot himself after the rampage, but put on his goggles first, because sparks and gunpowder from a gun can injure your eyes.

Eric Boehlert, “Rampage Nation: The Press No Longer Cares About Epic Gun Violence,” Workplace Violence News, March 24, 2009,
www.workplaceviolencenews.com
.

“Six Dead after Workers Argue,”
AJC.com
, June 26, 2008,
www.ajc.com
.

244

FACT :
Occupational fraud schemes are most commonly committed by the accounting department or upper management.
Executive frauds are particularly costly
, resulting in a median loss of $850,000.
I know lots of executive frauds. I’ve worked for several of them.

“2008 Report to the Nation on Occupational Fraud and Abuse,” Association of Certified Fraud Examiners,
www.acfe.com
.

245

FACT :
Hourly wages for 80 percent of U.S. workers have risen
by just i percent
after inflation since 1979.
Hey, we got a raise!

Steven Greenhouse, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker (Random House, 2008).

246

FACT :
One out of three companies that go bankrupt each year do so as
a result of employee theft
.

Almost 80 percent of workers admit that they have, or would consider, stealing from their employers.
If a few filched Post-It Notes and paper clips can drive a company out of business, they probably weren’t going to last long, anyway.

Nicole Jacoby, “Battling Workplace Theft,” CNN Money, August 19, 1999,
www.money.cnn.com
.