Murder in the Office

“Murder in the Office” makes many telling and significant points about the frustrations and stresses suffered by lower-echelon public employees at the hands of inept, abusive, incompetent, venal, power-hungry top administrators--who incidentally believe they are “merely doing their jobs.”

My experience with public employment (in the Cal State University system) has shown me that top administrators talk only to other top administrators. If the lower-echelon employees in Garden Grove had been taken seriously, and if they had had some clout and power, the upper administrators might have prevented the final awful result.

I propose a law that would hold top administrators personally liable for dereliction and malfeasance in the workplace. Annual job appraisals, performed by all lower-echelon staff members, would be mandatory. In this way, abusive and inept administrators could no longer hide behind the curtain of confidentiality in personnel records.

A. J. Spiegel

Huntington Beach