This makes me angry. A Jacksonville, Florida man, Colin Bruley, took heroic measures to save a woman’s life. His reward? Getting fired from his job.
Bruley worked as a leasing agent for an apartment complex. Late one evening, he awoke to the sound of gunfire nearby and screaming. He grabbed his 12-gauge shotgun and ran out the door to see what was the matter.
He found one of the residents lying down with a bloody leg, to which he immediately tended to.
The victim and her sister praised him for his help. But what did management do? They said he was in violation of company policy: brandishing a weapon on company property and failing to report the incident afterwards.
Excuse me? 
It astonishes me every time I hear of such ignorance. This is a perfect example of people refusing to think for themselves and doing the right thing. Instead, they smell “lawsuits” in the air and make themselves feel productive by doing something. And if that something has been written down somewhere, then certainly they’re doing the right thing. Right? Wrong.
Hey, here’s an idea for management: instead of applying a policy that clearly wasn’t meant to cover such an incident (fitting a square peg into a round hole), why not put some common sense effort into your actions?
Have we really sunk this low? Has common sense actually been substituted by playing it safe?
Hey, I’m all for planning ahead — I am, after all, a project manager by trade. But I know from experience that you plan for the unknown. You have a contingency plan for when things go astray. And if your contingencies don’t apply, then darnit you think of something that will!
When policy after policy is created, we run the risk of saying, “Hey we don’t have to think anymore because we’ve already done it.” Not so. Policies are important, but not to the extent that we remove ourselves from responsibility and stop being thinkers.
[tags]responsibility,common sense,heroes[/tags]
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I’m so sick of this kind of super protective American idiocracy. The landlord with the gun did the right thing, for Goodness sake! Imagine if he had been there at Virginia Tech? The Washington Post summed up this story right when they asked “Did Superman have it so rough?“
Gosh… What he did was wonderful and yet he was punished, not rewarded. People are so stupid.
Yep, I agree. Too much CYA and not enough thinking.
This is one of the main reasons I don’t like people. They do things like make up policies that they hold to the letter, even when circumstances call for something else to be done. For crying out loud, praise the man for not allowing a tenant to bleed to death or possibly be shot again, don’t fire him!
@Charity: I second that!
the worst part is is that if he played it safe and didnt do anything at all and let some body know instead the poor resident could’ve bled to death and the poor man most likely would’ve been filed for negligence
its a lose lose situation for the guy
ppl are so rediculous these days all they do is smell money in the air and run towards it
Hi Steve, yes it’s quite a mess what society has come up with. People are afraid of doing something because some moron got their way years ago, and they told two friends and so on and so on…:)
@Travis: Hey thanks for stopping by. I would have responded sooner, but I didn’t even find your comment until I went to review my spam queue. I can’t explain why your’s was there, but glad I was able to snatch it back!
Thanks for the post and all the comments.
@Colin
Thanks for dropping by.
You’re very welcome, Colin.
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