Not being compensated for your work is one of the worst feelings. It’s something that happens to people in industries across the world. Sometimes it can be a scam from dishonest employers and, other times, it’s a glitch in payroll software. Either way, it’s not the best thing to have happen because we’ve got bills to pay, mouths to feed, ain’t nothin’ in this world for free.
Echoing the sentiments of Cage The Elephant, we agree that money doesn’t grow on trees. So when you aren’t getting paid, what should you do? One guy in the United Kingdom had a destructive answer to that question that he should probably have thought through.
Automobile accidents account for 52% of all personal injury lawsuits, but our disgruntled hero took his little rampage to the next level. And we can hardly use the word accident to describe it.
Presently unnamed, one construction worker got really upset about not being paid. Rather than consulting his supervisor, he unleashed his wrath in the least constructive way possible. The construction project he had been working on was the front of a Travelodge hotel. When he hadn’t received his wages, he fired up a miniature backhoe and proceeded to use the machine to destroy the entire front of the building. Videos taken by witnesses show the whole thing going down:
“If you’d just paid me my [expletive] 600 pounds!” he’s recorded yelling in the midst of his demolition derby.
The trouble is, the man had been paid. Rather than the funds going into his account the previous Friday, they were deposited on Monday due to a banking glitch. It’s not ideal, but it’s not the end of the world. Instead of rationality, he opted for rampage. Rather than getting on his mobile app and checking his bank balance on Monday morning, he got into a heavy construction vehicle and destroyed the project he thought he’d been unpaid for working on. Oops.
From 2012 to 2017, the vehicle repair industry grew 2.5%, but it wasn’t this vehicle that needed damage repair. He drove the backhoe through the front windows of the hotel and proceeded to wreak havoc on the reception area.
“We’d put the last tile in, cleaned up and made sure everything was perfect. Then some idiot in a mini digger decided to drive through the middle of the building. There were loads of workers outside all gobsmacked, jaws to the floor wondering what’s going on,” said a fellow worker who watched this take place.
After he got the rage out of his system, he naturally fled the scene. Police apprehended him shortly thereafter and are investigating his ruinous rage ride. No one was injured and, somehow, the damages he caused mostly turned out to be quick cosmetic fixes that wouldn’t take too much time.
Research suggests that building good work relationships makes people happier and more productive, boosting engagement levels by 50%. What we can’t fathom is that amongst the construction site, no one thought to tell the backhoe wielding fella that his money was in his account. Instead, they filmed him destroying the work they’d all done together. Interesting.
Whichever way you look at it, we wager that his destructive stunt will end up costing him significantly more than the “missing” money that sparked it in the first place.