‘What do you mean you lost the snowplow?’
January 7, 2009 by Fred HosierPosted in: Employees do the strangest things, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views
As an HR pro, have you ever fielded reports about missing company equipment? A stapler or tape dispenser here, a pair of safety goggles there. Well, just imagine if your company lost something as large as a snowplow. That’s what happened in Polk County, MN, and now a county employee has paid for the mistake with his job.
Mike Raymond was fired after accidentally sinking a snowplow to the bottom of a river.
Raymond was assigned to clear parking lots of snow and ice one day in December.
Besides doing that, he tried to clear a path for ice fisherman on Red Lake River with the $200,000 plow — actually a front-end loader.
The loader slid into the water and sank to the bottom.
Emergency workers fished him out of the water.
County engineer Rich Sanders said Raymond was a good employee, but he clearly violated department rules.
Raymond worked for the Polk County Highway Department for 28 years.
It’ll cost the county thousands of dollars to fix the loader.
Have you ever had an employee damage or destroy an expensive piece of company property? You can tell us about it (anonymously) in the Comments Box.
Tags: fired, missing equipment, snowplow
January 7th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
A long-term Operations employee became angry at some other co-workers (because they moved some equipment that he had placed), and slammed the door to the hockey team box, causing a $400 piece of hockey glass to shatter. He was just as upset when we gave him a formal written warning and required him to fix the glass.
January 8th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
A local university was doing some research on one of the barrier islands. They used an employee’s boat to float a rented motorized lift valued at $50,000 over to the island. Oh yeah, the boat and the lift sank in about 20 feet of salt water.
January 9th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
At one of my former employers, we had an employee run a forklift completely through a wall that separated the plant from the office area. On the other side of the wall was the executive conference room. Imagine their surprise when a forklift literally “crashed” their meeting.
January 9th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
My brothers own a logging company in north Idaho, they have had a truck driver recklessly put a logging truck into the river and a skidder (like a large crane) over a ravine, not salvagable!
January 12th, 2009 at 9:42 am
We had an employee that was watching an attractive woman walk pass the job site, while he was driving afork truck. Imagine his surprise when he drove the forks into a high voltage conduit- shorting out half of the complex. He did spark up a conversation with her. She had been hired by the company to review the companies safety performance.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:57 am
A good employee of 28 years loses his job because of a slip on the ice, albeit a very expensive slip, trying to do what many may consider to be a patriotic act, that is cleaing a way for ice fisheremen. Perhaps his cause will be taken up by Senator Franken, who I am sure could appreciate the artistic potential of the incident.