May sound like a strange way to title a topic, but if this actually helps someone see they may be heading down a dead-end, maybe this post will be worth it.
I had to go to work on my day off last Thursday, and it wasn't for any sort of happy occasion. I had fire a guy because he basically let World of Warcraft destroy his life. I've worked with this guy off and on for five years. When I first started working at the paper, he was obsessed by EQ2. When I left for a year and came back, it was WoW, and it was that way until he got fired a year and a half ago. His being fired the first time was for: bad hygiene, drinking, and tardiness. At the end of last year, this guy came back to us non-stop begging for his job back, claiming he changed, that he had been taking therapy and cut down on the gaming. He fooled my boss and my warehouse foreman into believing this as he was hired back, much to my dismay and under my protest.
When I saw the new expansion for WoW start to make waves over the summer, I told my boss he better be prepared to fire this guy, because all of the same old problems were going to arise again. He didn't believe me, thought if kept having talk after talk with this guy, he'd actually get it.
Well, he didn't.
The bad hygiene was first; I have no sense of smell, but this guy came in with clothes so bad one night, I didn't want him any closer than 5 feet in front of me. 3 occasions I had to send him home for that. Then the last straw hit over the weekend when beer was noticable on him. When my boss and I fired him, his eyes were bloodshot-red and he smelled like beer yet again. He affirmed he'd been up most of the night doing nothing but playing WoW and only had a couple hours of sleep before he came to work.
Obsession is a funny thing, it comes in so innocently, small things at first are deemed unimportant to give the obsession more time and room to grow. Then you don't see what has happened until you've hit bottom. Out of all of this, the only person I felt sorry for was my boss; it was his call to hire this guy back, and now the man we let go may decide to go kill himself because he said 'My life is officially over; I'm 49 years old and can't get work anywhere else.' I may be a bastard about this, but if this guy kills himself, it wouldn't be a loss to society since he refuses to participate in the 'real' world anyway.
Writing about gaming destroying someone's life is a little odd, because I'm a gamer myself. I play MMO's, console and computer games, and I even enjoy good old pen-and-paper role-playing. But, when it comes down to it, I have a job, I'm married, I have bills to pay, and I have friends IRL. I try never to lose sight of that, because I look around and see how easy it is to really lose everything when you let fantasy overtake reality.
So, the question is there. Has something almost ruined your life? Was it in the past, recent, or is it just starting to unfold?
I had to go to work on my day off last Thursday, and it wasn't for any sort of happy occasion. I had fire a guy because he basically let World of Warcraft destroy his life. I've worked with this guy off and on for five years. When I first started working at the paper, he was obsessed by EQ2. When I left for a year and came back, it was WoW, and it was that way until he got fired a year and a half ago. His being fired the first time was for: bad hygiene, drinking, and tardiness. At the end of last year, this guy came back to us non-stop begging for his job back, claiming he changed, that he had been taking therapy and cut down on the gaming. He fooled my boss and my warehouse foreman into believing this as he was hired back, much to my dismay and under my protest.
When I saw the new expansion for WoW start to make waves over the summer, I told my boss he better be prepared to fire this guy, because all of the same old problems were going to arise again. He didn't believe me, thought if kept having talk after talk with this guy, he'd actually get it.
Well, he didn't.
The bad hygiene was first; I have no sense of smell, but this guy came in with clothes so bad one night, I didn't want him any closer than 5 feet in front of me. 3 occasions I had to send him home for that. Then the last straw hit over the weekend when beer was noticable on him. When my boss and I fired him, his eyes were bloodshot-red and he smelled like beer yet again. He affirmed he'd been up most of the night doing nothing but playing WoW and only had a couple hours of sleep before he came to work.
Obsession is a funny thing, it comes in so innocently, small things at first are deemed unimportant to give the obsession more time and room to grow. Then you don't see what has happened until you've hit bottom. Out of all of this, the only person I felt sorry for was my boss; it was his call to hire this guy back, and now the man we let go may decide to go kill himself because he said 'My life is officially over; I'm 49 years old and can't get work anywhere else.' I may be a bastard about this, but if this guy kills himself, it wouldn't be a loss to society since he refuses to participate in the 'real' world anyway.
Writing about gaming destroying someone's life is a little odd, because I'm a gamer myself. I play MMO's, console and computer games, and I even enjoy good old pen-and-paper role-playing. But, when it comes down to it, I have a job, I'm married, I have bills to pay, and I have friends IRL. I try never to lose sight of that, because I look around and see how easy it is to really lose everything when you let fantasy overtake reality.
So, the question is there. Has something almost ruined your life? Was it in the past, recent, or is it just starting to unfold?
, or teh intrawebz
