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Sunday, June 12, 2005

Phil the Pill

Philip Cooney has resigned from his job as chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, within a few days of being outed as the personification of Dilbert's boss.

I notice that he may pull the traditional, but what I consider unethical, tactic of draining his paid-vacation time as he leaves office:
"[Mr Cooney] had accumulated many weeks on leave, and so he decided to resign and take the summer off to spend some time with his family," presidential spokeswoman Erin Healy told AFP news agency.
Please go someplace nice and hot, you might as well start getting use to it.

8 Comments:

Professor Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm glad to see Mr. Cooney go too, but find your slur against him for "draining" his paid-vacation time bizarre. Paid vacation is an accrued liability on the part of ones employer. What would be unethical would be for an employer not to honor that liability.

4:11 PM  
Professor Anonymous Anonymous said...

I would leave my job and then start another job right away without dipping into that bucket. My ethics apparently are different than most people's. I rate this the same as calling in sick. It would have been funny if te

7:18 PM  
Professor Blogger @whut said...

the presidential spokeswoman had said he was going to call in sick for the rest of the summer.

7:19 PM  
Professor Blogger Big Gav said...

I'm a bit confused - if he is just quitting and taking some time off to spend his time off why is that a problem ?

If he's calling in sick for a month or two then thats disgraceful (and I would have thought illegal), but your original wording in the post doesn't indicate thats the case...

Great comparison to Dilbert's boss though :-)

11:00 PM  
Professor Blogger JMS said...

Well, consider those people who work 50+ hours weeks and don't use their vacation time - they feel, maybe correctly, that they will be fired (laid off) if they "slack" - so companies end up sleazily pocketing paid vacation time by using hierarchial peer pressure against employees. The rot these days comes from the top down.

On the other hand, I also know that when employees leave at my current company, involuntary or not, they get a check for any vacation time "accrued" - no questions asked. But I think that varies quite a bit these days, depends on where you work and what you do.

But we are talking Mr. Cooney here, a guy who probably got a fat bonus to piss in subordinates faces, probably got a severance package for a job well done (even though he "quit"), and the least of it, his `big boss' 3 or 4 week contractual vacation payout.

Lots of Americans work without health care, paid vacation, much less job security.

The new economy. We'll all be warm together.

Thanks Cooney.

12:48 AM  
Professor Blogger @whut said...

Here is another quote:

“Mr. Cooney has long been considering his options following four years of service in the administration,” she said. “He had accumulated four weeks of leave and decided to resign and take the summer off to spend time with his family.”

You may be right and I am showing a variant of class envy, but this just SO reminds me of the little kid who runs off from the playground while taking his toys with him.

Remember, before this job, he was an energy industry lobbyist.

11:05 AM  
Professor Blogger SW said...

I don't begrudge the fucker his vacation time. I'm steamed about the four years he spent destroying the god damn planet. We all would have been better off if he would have spent the last 208 weeks on vacation.

7:58 PM  
Professor Blogger @whut said...

SW:

You one-upped me good! Ever thought of applying for the RudePundit's job?

Touche.

8:13 PM  

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