The article about two very convenient 'accidents' describes how a work colleague escaped from some difficult situations at someone else's expense.
I have remembered another example of someone I worked with causing suffering to others by using illegitimate methods to deal with a work-related problem.
The victim of the first colleague was a little girl; on the second occasion two young men were involved. These men became ill rather than having accidents and they were deliberately targeted rather than indirectly affected, but once again the case involved a perpetrator who failed to negotiate with people in the normal manner and the phenomenon that I think of as psychological black magic.
The events described here happened some years after the first case, and they took place in a different company.
They involved a colleague I shall call Ms X. I was very wary of her right from the start, and the trouble that she subsequently caused, of which this story is just a small example, showed that my instincts were correct.
Ms X was a senior accountant. In addition to her main job, she did the accounts for another organisation or two on a voluntary basis in her spare time – I think it was for the Brownies and/or her local church.
The voluntary work started to feel like an imposition. Rather than just tell the people concerned that it was getting too much for her, Ms X very typically tried to manipulate some fellow employees into taking her place.
Ms X got one of the more junior accountants to take on some of her voluntary work; he then became very ill and took extended medical leave. By the time he returned, she had left the company.
The second man was a colleague of the first. He resisted the pressure to take over some of the voluntary accounts work; he then became very depressed. He left the company. His new job didn't work out, and he eventually returned to his old position. By this time, Ms X had left the company.
