Woman Jailed For Starting Office Fire To Leave Work Early 136
A Florida woman was sentenced to nine months in jail, followed by five years of probation, for starting an office fire so she could get out of work early. From the article: "Pasco sheriff's investigators said Michelle Perrino, 40, started a fire at Bayonet Point Oxygen on May 12, 2009. Perrino drew suspicion when she mentioned the fire's origin — a filing cabinet — during an employee meeting. Employees had not been told where the fire started." I hope she had the good sense to start the fire on Friday so she could have a long weekend.
Re:Work avoidance is a serious problem. (Score:0, Informative)
Did you know that about 40% of sick days are taken on a Monday or a Friday?
That is, given most people work Monday to Friday, the sick days are evenly distributed: 40% of the leaves are taken during 40% of the working days...
Were you trying to make some kind of point there?
Re:Bayonet Point Oxygen? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Doesn't work for IT (Score:3, Informative)
Actually the problem here looks like she was a complete and total moron who blabbed details of the crime that only investigators, the owners, and the criminal would have had.
Sociopathic *and* stupid. there's a match made in heaven.
Re:Work avoidance is a serious problem. (Score:2, Informative)
BP is doing its part to keep that nasty stuff under control by encasing it in a viscous organic containment substrate.
Re:Bayonet Point Oxygen? (Score:3, Informative)
No, it is NOT a myth. Did I say that oxygen was flammable? No, because it isn't. However, in the presence of concentrated oxygen (vs the concentration normally found in the atmosphere), fuel will burn MUCH MUCH quicker. Things that would normally burn at a very slow pace can go up in flames in just a few seconds in pure oxygen. Dropping a hot cigarette ash on your clothing would just normally smolder for a second, cause a burn mark, and then extinguish itself. In the presence of concentrated oxygen, however, that same ash can cause your clothing to go up in flames quickly, causing severe burns.
So of course it's not dangerous because it's flammable. It's dangerous because it can turn a minor fire into a blaze very quickly.
Re:Bayonet Point Oxygen? (Score:3, Informative)
I should also add on to my last post the following:
The other danger with oxygen is that not only does it make things burn quickly, but it makes it difficult to extinguish. So if you are working with fire (say, trying to set an office supply cabinet on fire) and a spark jumps to you and sets your clothing on fire, normally you could just pat it out, or if worse, do the stop-drop-roll technique or use a blanket to smother it. The problem is, with concentrated oxygen those techniques often don't work very well because you can't remove enough oxygen to interrupt the combustion.