Normally only pictures of sleeping cats go viral. But this week a Twitpic’d photo of a sleeping TTC attendant made the rounds online, in the media and apparently at the offices of the TTC.
It was taken by Jason Wieler of the site OGLE Toronto on Jan. 9.
Almost two weeks after the fact, this tweet from TTC chair Adam Giambrone: “Investigation of sleeping collector underway. Clearly not acceptable behaviour.”
Which was then followed by this statement from the TTC union: “Whatever the outcome of the enquiry, it is very discouraging that the picture taker and, apparently, other customers, made no attempt to determine if there was anything wrong with this TTC employee.”
Amazing that a photo of a sleeping anyone can inspire this sort of reaction. Has the whole TTC gone mad, or is this a problem of proportion?
I don’t think there’s any risk of oversimplifying here, just because, at face value, this is so f-ing simple: One guy fell asleep on the job. Not the first time that’ll happen, not the last either.
How does that warrant an enquiry? Just phone the guy in the picture, tell him not to do it again.
A single employee sleeping on the job is certainly not an indication of systemic or widespread problems.
More objectionable than the snoozing collector, from my perspective, is this response we’re seeing. Here are, in bullet-point form, some questions I’m asking myself about this “enquiry.”
- Does it not cost money to have an enquiry?
- If so, can the TTC afford that? For a guy who fell asleep?
- Is this sort of back-and-forth about investigations healthy for the union-management relationship? Is it worth it?
- Besides asking TTC employees not to sleep, what can seriously be done to curb sleeping at work? Skip the morning shoot-around?
- Could the TTC just say that it’s not official policy to sleep on the job, that it shouldn’t happen again, and then be done with it?
Clearly sleeping at work is not acceptable. That I’ll grant our esteemed TTC chair. But the more publicity this photo gets, the more people will look to catch misbehaving TTC employees on camera. Just look into it and let it go. Let’s all keep at least some perspective and not let this isolated yet embarrassing case become more embarrassing.[rssbreak]
