Man who wrestled shark away from kids fired for missing work

Started by garbon, March 13, 2013, 01:00:43 PM

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garbon

March 13, 2013, 01:00:43 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/man-shark-wrestle-video-fired-155745529.html

QuoteA 62-year-old man who bravely dragged a shark away from children at an Australian beach has been fired from his job at a British charity because he had claimed to be on sick leave.

Paul Marshallsea and his 56-year-old wife, Wendy, were on leave from the Pant & Dowlais Boys & Girls Club in Wales for "work-related stress" in January, when he was spotted on a video grabbing the shark in shallow water as it approached the children and pulling it in the other direction. The footage, captured by a local television crew, went viral, with Marshallsea "hailed a hero," as London's Telegraph newspaper put it.

"We don't recommend manhandling sharks, but this gentleman did a great job," a spokesman for the Australian coast guard said at the time.

But Marshallsea and his wife returned from Australia to find a letter from the charity's board of trustees informing the pair they had been fired.

"Whilst unfit to work you were well enough to travel to Australia," the letter read in part. "And, according to recent news footage of yourself in Queensland, you allegedly grabbed a shark by the tail and narrowly missed being bitten by quickly jumping out of the way."

The husband and wife had worked there for 10 years.

"You think being in charge and running a children's charity, they would have patted me on the back and congratulated me," Marshallsea told the paper. "But to sack us both without any sort of discussion first is just disgusting."

They should have congratulated me on lying and skipping work!
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

fhdz

#1
March 13, 2013, 01:03:16 PM
Why did they take sick leave? Couldn't they just have taken vacation honestly and sidestepped the whole stupid thing?

He's a little too indignant, which suggests that he knows he was guilty of lying about the sick leave.
and the horse you rode in on

Phillip V

#2
March 13, 2013, 01:03:50 PM
So he was on vacation while claiming to be sick?

Malthus

#3
March 13, 2013, 01:05:52 PM
 :lol:

Sucks to get caught.
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane—Marcus Aurelius

Neil

#4
March 13, 2013, 01:13:36 PM
Yeah, he did a good thing, but he also did a bad thing.  Stannis would have made him a knight and cut off some of his fingers.
I do not hate you, nor do I love you, but you are made out of atoms which I can use for something else.

Jacob

#5
March 13, 2013, 01:21:52 PM
Quote from: garbon on March 13, 2013, 01:00:43 PMThey should have congratulated me on lying and skipping work!

He was on stress leave.

You're familiar with that sort of thing - isn't going to relax at a beach the kind of thing you're supposed to do on stress leave?

Admiral Yi

#6
March 13, 2013, 01:31:02 PM
It's perfectly reasonable to go relax on a beach in Australia to relieve stress, but it appears he was granted the leave because he claimed to be incapacitated and unable to perform his job.

sbr

#7
March 13, 2013, 01:31:42 PM
Is his job wrestling sharks?

garbon

#8
March 13, 2013, 01:36:16 PM
Quote from: Jacob on March 13, 2013, 01:21:52 PM
Quote from: garbon on March 13, 2013, 01:00:43 PMThey should have congratulated me on lying and skipping work!

He was on stress leave.

You're familiar with that sort of thing - isn't going to relax at a beach the kind of thing you're supposed to do on stress leave?

Actually my work had me down for unspecified medical leave. ;) (Also I did run into one of our director's while taking a plane flight.)

But yeah what Yi said.
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Phillip V

#9
March 13, 2013, 01:40:31 PM
"Work-related stress" is destroying Great Britain.

Jacob

#10
March 13, 2013, 03:03:43 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 13, 2013, 01:31:02 PM
It's perfectly reasonable to go relax on a beach in Australia to relieve stress, but it appears he was granted the leave because he claimed to be incapacitated and unable to perform his job.

Unless his job was to lay on a beach in Australia and/or wrestling sharks, I don't see how either of those activities contradict his claim.

Razgovory

#11
March 13, 2013, 03:09:09 PM
Beating up a lawyer on the beach doesn't count as sick leave.
I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017

grumbler

#12
March 13, 2013, 03:11:48 PM
Quote from: Jacob on March 13, 2013, 03:03:43 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 13, 2013, 01:31:02 PM
It's perfectly reasonable to go relax on a beach in Australia to relieve stress, but it appears he was granted the leave because he claimed to be incapacitated and unable to perform his job.

Unless his job was to lay on a beach in Australia and/or wrestling sharks, I don't see how either of those activities contradict his claim.
Unless his job was harder than wresting sharks, I don't see how he can justify wrestling sharks and being unable to do his (their) job.

Seems a pretty clear scam to me.  Vacations should be taken using vacation leave, not disability leave.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!

Eddie Teach

#13
March 13, 2013, 03:18:20 PM
Quote from: grumbler on March 13, 2013, 03:11:48 PM
Unless his job was harder than wresting sharks, I don't see how he can justify wrestling sharks and being unable to do his (their) job.

He wasn't there to wrestle sharks. It just happened.

I'd imagine his job was more stressful than lying on a beach.
To sleep, perchance to dream. But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?

Admiral Yi

#14
March 13, 2013, 03:20:19 PM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on March 13, 2013, 03:18:20 PM
I'd imagine his job was more stressful than lying on a beach.

That's not a very helpful criteria for deciding if someone deserves disability leave.
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