Crash Dummy

On a recent spring morning, a supervisor called me to notify me that one of her employees was arrested in the middle of the night. I continued to listen, #unbothered, as this was not the first time I received a call like this. But then there was an “and.” The supervisor informed me that the newly hired and newly incarnated employee, who we’ll call Nick, was arrested while driving our company vehicle, and was charged with reckless driving. When the supervisor, who we’ll call Lori, continued to question him, Nick finally admitted to being charged with driving under the influence and crashing our vehicle into a pole. Nick was purposely nebulous in his account of the incident, as he was on a recorded line and being held for bail.

I will say, this story way a first. With Lori on the line, I called our Facilities Manager, “Keith,” who also handled the fleet of vehicles. He was able to track the car’s movement throughout the course of the night and discovered many inconsistencies between Nick’s story and the data he obtained. For starters, Nick’s job required him to pick up and drop off passengers in a specific region, however, Nick was not in his assigned territory for his entire shift. In fact, for most of the night, Nick was parked. Keith was able to determine that when the car was actually in motion, Nick’s driving progressively became more erratic; Nick’s speed increased throughout the night and he triggered more “hard-break alerts,” meaning that he was slamming on the breaks as the night went on. These behaviors were consistent with Nick actually drinking behind the wheel, while either fraudulently documenting picking up and dropping off passengers, or even worse, actually driving the passengers while lit.

Despite his shift ending at 12:00 midnight, Nick continued to drive the vehicle well into the wee hours of the morning, and despite his account that he crashed the vehicle at around 1:00 AM, Keith was able to determine that the vehicle crashed at 4:16 AM, four hours after he clocked out.

Keith was eventually able to obtain a police report, which depicted an even more vastly different story than Nick’s, along with pictures of the vehicle. The car actually did not hit a pole, but a traffic light. The traffic light fell onto the vehicle, causing the vehicle to catch on fire. The remains of the vehicle were charcoaled and melted, with only the remnants of the frame of the vehicle to show that the blackened pile of rubble was once a vehicle.

Once I caught wind of the details, I immediately and emphatically unquestionably decided that Nick’s fate was immediate termination.

I coached Lori exactly what to say if Nick should call her. With my instincts on point, the next day Nick called to say that he was trying to make bail, so that he could return to work. Imagine thinking that you still had a job that required you to drive after being arrested for driving under the influence with a company’s car that you totaled by crashing into a traffic light, which caused it to be burnt to the ground quicker than the Canadian wild fires (too soon?). Lori, who was a fairly new manager, recounted the story to me and innocently explained to Nick that he unfortunately would not have a job to return to because he crashed our vehicle, which caused catastrophic financial losses to the company and humongous risks to our reputation.

Hopefully this story makes you think twice before drinking behind the wheel, especially when the time you want to drink the most is at work.

Until next time…