Many years ago, when Wang Labs was still a company - that many years ago (Wang's been a goner since the 1990's) - a friend and colleague of mine was laid off. I had already left the company, having fled screaming in December 1989, a survivor of untold Wang lay-off sprees, including a devastating pink slip fest on my 40th birthday in which thousands of folks were let go.
Anyway, my friend Cathy had survived that action, but she was caught up in one a few months later. When she called me afterwards to let me know, she described her departure. "I drove out by the main entrance, rolled down the car window, and spit."
Cathy was one of the funniest people I've ever known, and she was also one of the best dressed. At a time and place where we all dressed ultra-professionally, she always looked especially great. So the idea of this highly professional suburban mom hocking a loogie at the Wang building completely cracked me up. Bonus points in that she aimed her venom at the main entrance, which employees weren't allowed to use.
Oh, it's not as if Dr. An Wang, Wang's founder and ultra-leader, was there to witness this act of desecration. He died shortly after I scooted out, shortly before Cathy was shown the [side] door. And An Wang's son Fred, a very nice guy who had nepotistically been made the company's president, wasn't there to see Cathy's little spit festbut either. Just before I left, Fred had been fired by his father. I think that a fellow named Rick Miller, who had been brought in to turn the not-so-good-ship Wang around, was the man in charge.
The thought of Cathy's departure especially cracked me up - as she knew it would - because, a few weeks before I had left the doomed company, while climbing a staircase, I had come across a massive loogie on one of the steps. (Wang had radically cut back on cleaning services, and the building was an utter dump.)
In any case, given that there were no witnesses to Cathy's little act of FU, it can't be said that she burned any bridge. She soon found another job, and did just fine.
But some folks do burn their career bridges, dousing those bridges with gasoline and dropping a match.
One such person is a Massachusetts school IT guy who, having been "terminated" in June 2023, decided to do a bit of paying back. He decided to use his not-yet-terminated admin credentials to wreak a bit of havoc on the info systems at Haverhill's Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School, deactivating and deleting "thousands of Apple IDs from the school’s Apple School Manager accounts."
According to the Department of Justice, Conor LaHiff, 30, was sentenced by U.S. Chief District Court Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV to one month in prison and three years of supervised release, with the first 12 months served at home. In addition, he was ordered to pay $34,110 in restitution. LaHiff pleaded guilty in December 2023 to one count of unauthorized damage to protected computers.”
...“Committing a cyber intrusion to settle a score with your former employer is a bad idea but that’s exactly what Conor LaHiff did, and in doing so, he deactivated a high school’s phone system along with thousands of network user accounts,” said Jodi Cohen, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston Division. “This short-sighted scheme has brought serious consequences and should serve as a warning to others: the FBI will track down and bring to justice cyber criminals, regardless of what their motivation is for willfully breaking the law.” (Source: WWLP)
Before his crime was found out, LaHiff had managed to get himself hired by another public school system. But last fall, when he entered his plea in court, "a judge ordered that LaHiff notify prospective employers of his guilty plea, [US Attorney Joshua] Levy’s office said." (Source: Boston Globe)
Wonder how that worked out for Conor LaHiff.
Burn a bridge and it's not that easy crossing over it again.
Poor career move, Conor.
What a maroon.
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