Kids must come first when safety is at risk
A colleague often shows up for work under the influence of something; she’s silly, irresponsible and can’t get anything done; once she was lying on the floor giggling. Eventually the “elephant in the room” had to be acknowledged, but the president of the union, a mediator and myself came to a heated exchange about how to handle it. As usual they did nothing, so I approached the woman directly and said, “What you’re doing isn’t safe.” She promised she wouldn’t do it again; I don’t believe her. Then our company went out of business and we were all hired elsewhere. The same woman is here; she is doing her job and may be under the influence still. Should I tell our new employer? P.S. We’re school bus drivers.
William Porter was a pharmacist, musician and embezzler; he spent three years in jail. He also wrote wonderful short stories filled with humour, warmth and the ordinary stuff of North American life. But the defining characteristic of Porter’s tales were their surprise endings; just when you knew where things were headed, he would throw in a 90 degree twist and you had to start thinking all over again. Porter’s nom-de-plume was O. Henry.
Your letter would have made O. Henry proud.
Reading along, I knew exactly what to tell you in four words or less: “Mind your own business.” You named the “elephant” (in this case, apparently, pink) in appropriate ways. In return, the employer and union deemed her behaviour acceptable and your colleague made a commitment to change. Beyond that, the matter is out of your hands.
Then you tossed in your little postscript and that changes everything.
School bus drivers bear an incredible responsibility. Day in and day out, sometimes in terrible weather, they load up 40, more or less, of our most-precious assets and transport them hither and yon, to school, on field trips, wherever the quest for life takes them. Up in my part of the world, that means travelling on snow-covered roads, steering around ambient moose and listening for hours to kids singing “99 bottles of beer on the wall.” School bus drivers do a job I couldn’t do and, in return, earn less than the guy who delivers made-in-China junk to your local dollar store.
But it’s a job you can’t do drunk. Or high. Or impaired in any other way — not even with cold medication, pain killers, cellphones or whatever.
So here’s my advice. Your colleague made a commitment; give her an opportunity to honour it. But at the first concrete sign of any impairment whatsoever, speak directly to your supervisor, making sure she understands that this is a continuing pattern. You need also to speak again to your union rep, with the same message.
In general, I’m opposed to workplace vigilantism. But when you sign up to drive a bus full of kids, you implicitly agree to live by different rules than the local plumber, clergy or mortician, whose clients are, respectively, drips, docile or dead. You’re wheeling a 12-ton vehicle filled with young lives at high speed down a public road; no level of impairment is ever acceptable. Send your questions to star.ethics@yahoo.ca.