thanks Cheryl, for moving it to a new thread.
one of the things you posted was
“The No. 1 reason people give for making suicide attempts, pretty consistently across studies, is escape from some intolerable or humiliating situation.”
jim had a lot of pressures, just like each one of us. family, job, money and the list is long. some might have been on his mind, others not an issue.
but the defining point of the above statement. humiliating situation.
jim was in one of those. one of the worst.
best i can tell about jim, he took great pride in being a ups man. it was and had been a great part of his life. it had provided for his family and himself for many years.
now, this once proud man is fired for dishonesty. you can rationalize it all you want, what he did was a dishonest act. why he did it, i can not speak for. i can only state that i know it does go on, it goes on every day, and that in at least some cases, not only does management know about it, they actively look the other way so as to not rock the service boat.
if i had a dollar for every time a sup/manager told me to do something that behind the scenes is done, but is still wrong, i would pretty much be debt free.
getting back to jim, fired for dishonesty. with that charge, he can not draw unemployment (unless things have changed recently) and he is now and forever "branded". every job application he now fills out will have to have ups as a reference, and in doing so, he will have to state why he left.
further more, as a senior driver at his center, the shame of this type of action is real. a very humiliating experience. and in all this, he was trying to see if there was any way he could have his job back.
my personal opinion is that the humiliation he felt was very real. so real he did not want to share it with anyone else, even his beloved janice. and the longer it went on, the more it got to him.
blame ups, the system, the manager, the union, his co-workers of many years? all had input into the situation. but none reached jim, except the humiliation he felt. and he felt alone.
i mentioned before, one of the best tactics to use to break someone is to either keep them in solitary, or at least make them think they are going through this totally alone.
i do know from behind the scene reports i have gotten that the outcome could very well been very different had it been for a phone call or conversation earlier on. but none was forthcoming.
i guess more than any reason this is why i volunteered to become a steward. i know first hand how this type of situation can play with your mind. and no one from the union, company, or any of my fellow workers were in contact. everyone was too damn busy to call.
difference was i talked to my wife, my father-in-law whom i loved as my own, and prayed a lot. but that alone feeling still yet was terrible.
maybe instead of trying to assess blame, we need to take a bit more away from this. unless we stand for each other, check up on each other, and really care for our fellow brothers in brown.....
sorry for the rant. sorry janice if this hurts you in any way, because as i see it, there was nothing you could have done, nothing you could have known.
d