Control Issues

They’re part of a “fatigued, distracted and demoralized work force that is increasingly prone to making mistakes.” OK, that might not sound too far off from your place of work. There were reports of people sleeping on the job and one about an employee who “went into work drunk this summer and joked about ‘making big money buzzed.’ Another routinely smoked marijuana during breaks. A third employee threatened violence and then ‘aggressively pushed’ a colleague.” OK, but you could find evidence of such transgressions by combing through the scripts from The Office. But this is no ordinary place of work. There’s more at stake at this office than whether or not Jim and Pam get together. The colleague who was aggressively pushed was an air traffic controller in the process of directing airplanes. “While the U.S. airspace is remarkably safe, potentially dangerous close calls have been happening, on average, multiple times a week this year … Some controllers say they fear that a deadly crash is inevitable.” NYT (Gift Article): Drunk and Asleep on the Job: Air Traffic Controllers Pushed to the Brink. (If you want to work buzzed, high, sleepy, distracted, and violent, I suggest you consider writing a daily newsletter, that way no one except the proofreader gets hurt.)