5 ms·

> The employee was a civil servant [in southern Italy], and was assigned to a job in the hospital in 2005. It was at this point he stopped going into work, the

by yosito 6y ago

> The employee was a civil servant [in southern Italy], and was assigned to a job in the hospital in 2005. It was at this point he stopped going into work, the police said. > The police have also accused him of threatening his manager to stop her from filing a disciplinary report against him. The article gives a much different impression than the headline. Corrupt civil servant using threats of violence to siphon money under the cover of "employment" is much different than some rando playing hookey and getting away with it.

ulzeraj 6y ago
I thought it was going to be one of those fun stories about a sysadmin automating his work and it takes years to for their employers to realize that he've been doing nothing. This one however I feel no sympathy. I hope the public funds parasite gets punished.
s_dev 6y ago
Reading between the lines -- is this Mafia related?
- bobthechef 6y ago
  Not an unreasonable suspicion. How often do you get to threaten your manager like that unless you have something to back it up with? And Italy, especially the south, is notorious for Mafia presence. Heck, they bombed a church when Francis condemned them.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    The threat was almost certainly along the lines of "you know what happens to cops that narc on other cops" and not one of physical violence. Edit: yes I was wrong but cut me some f-ing slack for assuming the default.
    - pc86 6y ago
      Since there's nothing in the article even remotely suggesting the nature of the threat I'm curious what your source is.
      - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        Anyone who's ever worked for a large organization knows "that would be a politically unwise and you would have no future here" type threats outnumber threats of violence at least 1000:1 Per an additional source (not in English so I'm trusting the translation of someone who's disagreeing on the internet) provided in the comments it appears this guy was the exception to the rule and did pretend to have mafia connections.
        justinclift 6y ago
        > pretend Why "pretend"? It could be an actual thing. ;)
        geeB 6y ago
        Could you explain this a bit for those of us that either never worked for a large enough organization, or that did not pay enough attention to the politics while there? I get that a manager wouldn't want to put down their team since that puts them down too, but something this egregious seems so extreme that would not have those consequences, not to speak of the effect on the other employees' morale of having someone allowed to not work and get paid. I don't see how someone can threaten a manager's career without having something over them, either being part of organized crime, be related/friends with a much higher up person in the organization, or have something on the manager for blackmail.
        throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        Warning: I'm about to make a bunch of generalizations, this kind of crap isn't distributed evenly among government. You'll have good functional departments and you'll have backwaters full of deadbeats and everything in between. Same goes on the team level with a dept. In government it's pretty common to have dead weight employees who get no real work given to them and collect a paycheck so long as they show up (optional in Italy apparently). They can persist because they have connections higher up in the organization. Sometimes the jobs are just BS that doesn't exist so that politicians or their connected appointees at the top of the org chart can hand them out to people as favors (e.g. the deadbeat relative of a major donor could be given a 100k job as a thank you). There is also the union angle, we've all heard stories of toxic do-nothing employees who persist because they have seniority which lets them game the system. You get this to some extent in any large bureaucratic organization but the confluence of unions and government creates such a procedurally rigid environment that it makes it worse than you'd get in a BigCo shipyard or some other private sector workplace with lots of unions and bureaucracy >I get that a manager wouldn't want to put down their team since that puts them down too, but something this egregious seems so extreme that would not have those consequences, not to speak of the effect on the other employees' morale of having someone allowed to not work and get paid. You'd be correct in inferring that it's terrible for morale. In my observation it is a large part of why enthusiastic civil servants turn into jaded clock punchers who don't give a crap over the course of their careers. >I don't see how someone can threaten a manager's career without having something over them, either being part of organized crime, be related/friends with a much higher up person in the organization, or have something on the manager for blackmail. Imagine you get a green new manager that's promoted in from a more effective branch of the bureaucracy transferring into one of the more toxic branches. They notice someone's on their report list but not actually around or doing anything, etc. etc. So they contact the person. And the person responds "this is how things are done here", cites several examples of similar behavior done by people higher up the org chart than their boss that reporting them would threaten and point out why that may be unwise to do as a new manager. The new manager has a nearly infinite list of things that need fixing with the toxic area they've inherited. They know they need buy in from higher ups in order to fix things. If reporting their own 5day/wk deadbeat gets them on the wrong side of someone three levels up who's golfing 3day/week it may very well be a battle they don't pick, especially if they want to do good work and then move up and out. It's just money after all, being down one person or one person's salary is a much smaller problem than dragging that person into the office where they can cause problems or drawing the ire of higher ups.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
This kind of thing is rampant in Italy's public sector (and other nations as well). They basically just found one of the worst offenders (i.e. the guy that half the public sector employees aim to be) and are making an example out of him. The timing relative to other government misconduct in Italy is suspiciously convenient I might add. If this wasn't broadly considered ok he wouldn't have gotten away with it for 15yr and they wouldn't be going back 15yr to find "alleged threats" he made. Based on my experience the threat was something less like "imma bust a cap in yo ass" and more likely along the lines of "you know everyone does this and if you take a hard stance on this misconduct your career progression is dead" which is something that not everyone has to be explicitly told but a situation that damn near every career public servant (not just in Italy) will have to deal with at some point.
- toyg 6y ago
  See my other response about why you’re wrong about threats. This was beyond normal, it’s part of proceedings against 57 people involved in a scheme in the same hospital. Between this and the threats, chances are that “somebody” was managing the hospital as their personal cash machine.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    Like I replied elsewhere, my assumption was perfectly reasonable given the information provided by the BBC. If there was a major plot twist like he actually threatened physical violence as opposed to the usual retaliation should I not be able to count on them to mention that?

by yosito 6y ago

ulzeraj 6y ago

I thought it was going to be one of those fun stories about a sysadmin automating his work and it takes years to for their employers to realize that he've been doing nothing. This one however I feel no sympathy. I hope the public funds parasite gets punished.

s_dev 6y ago

Reading between the lines -- is this Mafia related?

bobthechef 6y ago
Not an unreasonable suspicion. How often do you get to threaten your manager like that unless you have something to back it up with? And Italy, especially the south, is notorious for Mafia presence. Heck, they bombed a church when Francis condemned them.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  The threat was almost certainly along the lines of "you know what happens to cops that narc on other cops" and not one of physical violence. Edit: yes I was wrong but cut me some f-ing slack for assuming the default.
  - pc86 6y ago
    Since there's nothing in the article even remotely suggesting the nature of the threat I'm curious what your source is.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      Anyone who's ever worked for a large organization knows "that would be a politically unwise and you would have no future here" type threats outnumber threats of violence at least 1000:1 Per an additional source (not in English so I'm trusting the translation of someone who's disagreeing on the internet) provided in the comments it appears this guy was the exception to the rule and did pretend to have mafia connections.
      - justinclift 6y ago
        > pretend Why "pretend"? It could be an actual thing. ;)
      - geeB 6y ago
        Could you explain this a bit for those of us that either never worked for a large enough organization, or that did not pay enough attention to the politics while there? I get that a manager wouldn't want to put down their team since that puts them down too, but something this egregious seems so extreme that would not have those consequences, not to speak of the effect on the other employees' morale of having someone allowed to not work and get paid. I don't see how someone can threaten a manager's career without having something over them, either being part of organized crime, be related/friends with a much higher up person in the organization, or have something on the manager for blackmail.
        throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        Warning: I'm about to make a bunch of generalizations, this kind of crap isn't distributed evenly among government. You'll have good functional departments and you'll have backwaters full of deadbeats and everything in between. Same goes on the team level with a dept. In government it's pretty common to have dead weight employees who get no real work given to them and collect a paycheck so long as they show up (optional in Italy apparently). They can persist because they have connections higher up in the organization. Sometimes the jobs are just BS that doesn't exist so that politicians or their connected appointees at the top of the org chart can hand them out to people as favors (e.g. the deadbeat relative of a major donor could be given a 100k job as a thank you). There is also the union angle, we've all heard stories of toxic do-nothing employees who persist because they have seniority which lets them game the system. You get this to some extent in any large bureaucratic organization but the confluence of unions and government creates such a procedurally rigid environment that it makes it worse than you'd get in a BigCo shipyard or some other private sector workplace with lots of unions and bureaucracy >I get that a manager wouldn't want to put down their team since that puts them down too, but something this egregious seems so extreme that would not have those consequences, not to speak of the effect on the other employees' morale of having someone allowed to not work and get paid. You'd be correct in inferring that it's terrible for morale. In my observation it is a large part of why enthusiastic civil servants turn into jaded clock punchers who don't give a crap over the course of their careers. >I don't see how someone can threaten a manager's career without having something over them, either being part of organized crime, be related/friends with a much higher up person in the organization, or have something on the manager for blackmail. Imagine you get a green new manager that's promoted in from a more effective branch of the bureaucracy transferring into one of the more toxic branches. They notice someone's on their report list but not actually around or doing anything, etc. etc. So they contact the person. And the person responds "this is how things are done here", cites several examples of similar behavior done by people higher up the org chart than their boss that reporting them would threaten and point out why that may be unwise to do as a new manager. The new manager has a nearly infinite list of things that need fixing with the toxic area they've inherited. They know they need buy in from higher ups in order to fix things. If reporting their own 5day/wk deadbeat gets them on the wrong side of someone three levels up who's golfing 3day/week it may very well be a battle they don't pick, especially if they want to do good work and then move up and out. It's just money after all, being down one person or one person's salary is a much smaller problem than dragging that person into the office where they can cause problems or drawing the ire of higher ups.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

This kind of thing is rampant in Italy's public sector (and other nations as well). They basically just found one of the worst offenders (i.e. the guy that half the public sector employees aim to be) and are making an example out of him. The timing relative to other government misconduct in Italy is suspiciously convenient I might add. If this wasn't broadly considered ok he wouldn't have gotten away with it for 15yr and they wouldn't be going back 15yr to find "alleged threats" he made. Based on my experience the threat was something less like "imma bust a cap in yo ass" and more likely along the lines of "you know everyone does this and if you take a hard stance on this misconduct your career progression is dead" which is something that not everyone has to be explicitly told but a situation that damn near every career public servant (not just in Italy) will have to deal with at some point.

toyg 6y ago
See my other response about why you’re wrong about threats. This was beyond normal, it’s part of proceedings against 57 people involved in a scheme in the same hospital. Between this and the threats, chances are that “somebody” was managing the hospital as their personal cash machine.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Like I replied elsewhere, my assumption was perfectly reasonable given the information provided by the BBC. If there was a major plot twist like he actually threatened physical violence as opposed to the usual retaliation should I not be able to count on them to mention that?