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.
Case of the Fridays (Score:5, Funny)
Well, studies HAVE shown that if you do this sort of thing on a Friday, there's less chance of an incident.
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It looks like it was a Wednesday. She was right in not going for the Holy Grail of the legendary 6-day weekend, but a 5-day weekend? Too greedy! Should have done the suspicious burning desktop system trick, or fire in the lady's bathroom. *Those* are 5-day weekend events. Hey, she got her wish though; plenty of time off from work!
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Just another evidence of stupidity.
Almost amazing that she didn't succeed in killing herself when starting the fire.
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Should have done the suspicious burning desktop system trick
Denholm: [Seeing a fire burning behind a broken monitor frame] Nice screensaver.
Denholm: [later] I love the way the smoke seems to be coming off the top of it...
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I hope they called 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3.
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I'll just send an e-mail.
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Six day weekend? pishaw!!!
She now has a 9 month weekend.
In fact, she probably won't work a day for the rest of her life unless its in her own back yard garden.
I've heard of people with smokin resumes but this is bound to set her career back a tad.
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Six day weekend? pishaw!!!
She now has a 9 month weekend.
9-month weekend? Yeah, I remember when I gave one of my female employees one of those! YEAH! giggity
and, uh, yeah... I have to pay child support dammit
Re:Case of the Fridays (Score:5, Funny)
She should get....
(you know what)
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She should get.... (you know what) ...fired.
YYEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!
Re:Case of the Fridays (Score:4, Funny)
YEAAAAAHHH!!
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Did you know that 40% of office fires are started on Mondays or Fridays? Shocking!
Crazy... (Score:5, Insightful)
If she hates her job that much, why doesn't she just quit?
And then set the place on fire?
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I'm thinking it was a round-about way of quitting. I doubt her job will be waiting after the 9 months in jail.
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If she was a public employee in Belgium it would. And they'd have to pay her salary - plus overtime - while she was in jail too.
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And take her red stapler...
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A suitable punishment would be 9 months of having to stay late at work.
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Better make it a fireproof office building. :P
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Because this happened in Florida, and if you don't like your job there you are shit out of luck because there aren't many open jobs for you to choose from (if any).
So because the job market sucks starting a fire in your office to get out early is better than quitting?
Doesn't work for IT (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly starting a fire or tripping a breaker won't work very well for anyone in IT, they'd just be stuck at work over the weekend making sure everything was working (or in the case of a fire, building new servers with no time to sleep or rest).
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Sadly starting a fire or tripping a breaker won't work very well for anyone in IT, they'd just be stuck at work over the weekend making sure everything was working (or in the case of a fire, building new servers with no time to sleep or rest).
Or they just go work for the company that cleans up the aftermath... Fùck'n "A"!!!
I think that job is union! (Score:2)
I think that job is union!
that is only good part about haveing to get up a 5am to do drywall at the new mcdonalds
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That's because you aren't thinking like a true BOFH - Obviously the problem here was that potential witnesses and evidence survived the fire.
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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.
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Are you sure the match [wikipedia.org] was made in heaven? :-)
Sociopathic and stupid vs not (Score:3, Insightful)
That doesn't surprise me that someone convicted of a crime is sociopathic and stupid.
Those that are sociopathic and smart become politicians, lawyers, and CEOs.
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She testified against herself? That violates the fifth amendment!
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Only if forced to do so. This woman was clearly just an idiot.
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She should sue herself!
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No but setting off the halon system or knocking the head off a fire sprinkler in the server room will.
Contractor knocked a head off in the crawl space above the server room. Nobody noticed the 2 feet of water up the glass until it hit the top of the first battery bank on the UPS system and it shorted. most of the servers happily ran for the 1 hour they were getting soaked.
I got to go home early every day for a week while new hardware was shipped to us. The Quake III games we played that week were a blast
Genius! (Score:2)
Work avoidance is a serious problem. (Score:5, Funny)
Work avoidance is a very serious problem, guys. Did you know that about 40% of sick days are taken on a Monday or a Friday?
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Work avoidance is a very serious problem, guys. Did you know that about 40% of sick days are taken on a Monday or a Friday?
Not to mention that 90% of statistics are made up.
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Not to mention that 90% of statistics are made up.
14% of all people know that.
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And the other 56% will once they learn math.
Re:Work avoidance is a serious problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
While, mandating a 6 week paid vacation for every employee is, in my opinion, going too far, it's absurd that there isn't a legislated right to at least a week or two of paid vacation. Productivity would most likely even go up were that to be enacted.
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yeah in my case my employers know that im only good 12 out of 14 days so i can do 12 but 13 is under question and 14 is right out.
Work avoidance is a serious benefit (Score:2)
mandating a 6 week paid vacation for every employee is, in my opinion, going too far
Your opinion, in my opinion, sucks.
I only get 5 weeks paid vacation, but we are entitled to 1.5x salary during those vacations. However, I can trade up to get 7 weeks paid vacation by declining the vacation bonus pay (thus merely getting normal pay during vacations). I tend to do this almost every year. A trade of 2.5 weeks pre-tax pay for 2 weeks vacation is a winner, at least until the government starts confiscating a chunk of my vacation time as taxes.
7 weeks paid annual vacation is about right for w
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What country are you in? Civilised countries do provide employees with statutory paid annual leave.
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That's not necessarily work avoidance. When I get sick it is usually close to the weekend, either because I get behind on my sleep during the week and my immune system is dead by Friday, or I get no sleep on the weekend trying to fit in as many fun things as I can, usually physically exhausting myself---again increasing the chances of getting sick. That, in fact, happened just last weekend.
Now it's safe to say /. is work avoidance.
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BP is doing its part to keep that nasty stuff under control by encasing it in a viscous organic containment substrate.
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WE should hold a meeting about that.
Better yet, let's hold meetings to build a focus group who can have meetings to find out more information about that,
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This is why 4x10s are better. Only 25% of work days are taken on Mondays or Fridays, with those schedules!
PHB: "What kind of idiot do they think I am?" (Score:2)
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Are you possibly aware of the word "Whoosh?". If not I can recommend urban dictionary [urbandictionary.com].
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Even in your native Germany?
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Meanwhile, 35 per cent of all sick leave is taken on a Monday, and the lowest rate is on Friday, at just 3 per cent of the total.
38% total. Looks like my 40% figure is just about right!
Bayonet Point Oxygen? (Score:4, Interesting)
Wait. So as if her action alone wasn't stupid enough, she started a fire at Bayonet Point Oxygen? An oxygen supply company? There's a reason they tell people on oxygen not to smoke.
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From TFA:
She probably worked in the office which was not attached to the warehouse/plant. I can't imagine bottles of oxygen exploding would cause that little damage. What happened to work avoidance through a meeting on your outlook calendar? geez. if she knew that trick, she'd still have a job. and not have a criminal record.
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The chemical properties of oxygen are only one of the reasons people on oxygen are told not to smoke. Actually the more obvious reason has to do with the fact that their lungs are clearly already screwed up.
And if you think all patients on oxygen accept this bit of seemingly-obvious advice, you would be sadly mistaken.
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Ayup. The hospital wouldn't send my grandfather home because they knew he smoked, and he wasn't well enough to go home without oxygen. Couple more weeks in the hospital, then he came home and started smoking again, then back to the hospital a couple of weeks later. I can't really blame him, he was already on the long downward spiral and just wanted to enjoy the time he had left.
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Actually it was less than a few weeks ago here in Denmark that a KOL patient on oxygen decided to have a smoke... Cigarette in mouth and flick the lighter... Whoosh!! - Instant fireball and a fried patient.
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Well, Captain Science, I don't know why you're asking me to "imagine" circumstances I already fully understand. Probably it's because you're the kind of idiot who posts snarky nonsense as AC so you can pretend that the tiny bits of knowledge you have are so monumental that surely the others in the conversation don't already possess them.
Of course, the most glaring flaw in your logic is hidden in the phrase "...at that point...". Yes, at the point where you actually ignite your pressurized O2, that's a big
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Oxygen can't ignite.
Wrong! Pure Oxygen breaks the infernal triangle. It turns nearly everything into a fuel and can act as it's own ignition source via adiabatic ignition. There's a reason all the pure oxygen valves we have at work are brightly coloured and have pressure equalisation valves around around them.
Be afraid! Oxygen is very hazardous.
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It is also the most addictive toxin on the planet. If you could stop breathing and not die of the withdrawal symptoms you would live forever.
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The oxygen would oxidize and form oxygen monooxide!
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Wait. So as if her action alone wasn't stupid enough, she started a fire at Bayonet Point Oxygen? An oxygen supply company? There's a reason they tell people on oxygen not to smoke
Even when they suspected her after she said "filing cabinet", her defense should have been "Duh, that's the only thing that can catch fire around here. We sell oxygen but it's not like it's, flammable."
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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
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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
Office Space reference missing (Score:2)
No Milton tag?
Incidentally, CSS on Idle broken for 522 days and counting.
You're fired! (Score:2)
Reason for leaving: I fired my boss!
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Hmmm...that's likely to ignite a debate at the office.
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A heated debate?
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I'm struck dumb - I can't match wits with you.
There's a backstory (Score:5, Funny)
There's always a back story. Did anyone ask her about the frequent moves she's had to endure? First on the Third Floor, then she got moved to the Second Floor, then to the lobby, then to the basement. And no one even mentioned the payroll issues she has been having. They stopped her paychecks for some reason. The last straw was probably the stapler incident...
Re:There's a backstory (Score:5, Funny)
And she was led to believe there would be cake.
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There was. She just did not receive a slice of cake.
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There is cake. Now pass it on so everybody gets some. Don't be greedy.
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Did they not let her listen to the radio at a reasonable volume?
~jaraxle
I remember this episode from KITH (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x3rzeDeOuk [youtube.com]
She was just burning the TPS reports (Score:2)
She was just burning the TPS reports
Doing it wrong. (Score:1)
You burn the building down AFTER you get fired.
Just ask Milton [youtube.com] or Dr. Steel [youtube.com]
Nine months off (Score:1)
I'll burn the place down (Score:3, Funny)
I think you have my stapler...
stapler (Score:2, Redundant)
Maybe somebody asked for her red stapler, one too many times?
Toll Booth (Score:2)
Point ? (Score:2)
Sticking to ya' (Score:2)
How is this special? (Score:2)
Well.... (Score:2)
What about feiging being sick? (Score:2)
What about telling people you feel a bit under the weather and going home?
Dislexic? (Score:1)
Nothing new (Score:2)
I used to work in a building that also had the FEMA and they would get a "bomb threat" and we would evacuate the entire building and we would leave for the day so that police could investigate. After awhile we noticed these bomb threats would happen in afternoon of nice days and Fridays so we guest that someone didn't want to work that afternoon or wanted a long weekend so they would call a "bomb threat". After FEMA moved out of the building and the bomb threats stopped that we knew that someone at FEMA wa
Must read carefully (Score:2)
Woman jailed for firing open office early in the morning in order to leave work early.
Ambiguous Headline (Score:2)
Woman Jailed For Starting Office Fire To Leave Work Early
Sorry to nitpick, but... Since people in jail work (what, you've never heard of a chain gang?), the headline can be parsed as "Woman, jailed for starting office fire, to leave work early" instead of the more plausible (and newsworthy) "Woman jailed, for starting office fire to leave work early".
Hrmm (Score:2)
Perhaps I'm just putting too much thought into idle, but I really have to wonder what combination of bleak life and missing bits of psyche lead this woman to actually set a fire to get a part day off. To be fair to her, apparently she really did need a mental health day (at least). It might not hurt her employer to review their policy on days off. It's apparently WAY too hard to get one.
I think it's fairly clear that whatever the problem is/was, jail and probation won't fix it (though it may well encourage
Would like to meet her (Score:2)
I'd like to meet her. She sounds hot!
Does she even know what O2 is? (Score:2)
Starting a FIRE at a company called "Bayonet Point OXYGEN" doesn't sound very bright to me.
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
News for nerds? Stuff that matters? This is not front-page material.
They must have taken her stapler.
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You don't know why this story is news for nerds? Didn't you get that memo? I'm going to go ahead and send you a copy of the memo. OK? Great. Also, I'm going to need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday. Yeah. OK.
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