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an employee an
opportunity to write, verbatim, what the rater has said about how well that employee will
perform at a higher classification.
You have the right to copy, for purposes of an appraisal of promotibility appeal,
the rater's comments.2
County counsel has not advised me otherwise regarding my interpretation of Civil
Service Rule 7 (which is cited in the footnote).
Similarly, Charles Navarette, a personnel analyst with the Department of Human
Resources, where AP appeals are filed, said candidates can take notes of the rater's
comments or have a copy of the rater's comments. He said that if a candidate is not
allowed to do so, give him a call. As they say in the hood, no te dejes y ponte trucha.
So if you want help on your AP appeal, por favor, review your scores, take
notes or get a copy and don't wait until the last hour of the last day that it must be
filed. Contact our office at least 5 days before the filing deadline….
* * *
There's a word some of you might be familiar with and might even
use regularly in casual conversation. It is the German word
"schadenfreude"; it means the enjoyment obtained from the trouble of
others. I've also read it suggests the state of mind of a person who is extremely
pleased at the misfortune of another person but doesn't want to express that joy publicly.
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The word came to mind in regard to what
happened to a 65-year-old CEA member named Rey Laertes (not his real name) who was
recently suspended from his job as a custodian with the Department of Health Services for
15 days for "conduct unbecoming of a county employee."
He has worked for DHS for close to 20 years and, like many men over 50, he
has had a problem with his prostate and bladder. One of the symptoms is an increased
urinary urgency, which he generally treated by going to the nearest men's room and
urinating as soon as he got the urge.
In fact, he is scheduled for a prostate biopsy later this year.
Last winter, while he was throwing cardboard in a trash compactor in the area of a
shuttered parking lot on the hospital grounds where he works, he experienced an episode of
urinary urgency.
The lot was shuttered because it was damaged structurally by the Northridge
earthquake in 1994. Laertes didn't have a key to the men's room and, even if he
would've, he thought he would not have made it to the restroom.
So he opened the unlocked door to the quake-damaged parking lot, closed it, and
urinated. Lo and behold,
like the guards Bernardo and Marcellus on the castle platform who saw the ghost of
Hamlet's father while on their midnight watch, two LA County safety officers were in the
darkened stairwell, a level above Laertes, and espied him urinating on the stairwell
floor.
They accosted him, interrogated him, asking him if he was a gang member, and cited
him for allegedly violating Penal Code section "374.4 [sic] and "VG 1148 PC
[sic]."
PC 374 prohibits littering. PC 1148 requires a criminal defendant's presence before
a felony verdict is received or allows the defendant's absence when a misdemeanor verdict
is received.
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Were these cops just confused about the Penal Code or were they
experiencing the schadenfreude of making a sport of Laertes's embarrassing
predicament?
The district attorney's office declined to prosecute him. His 15-day
suspension followed.
By going into an area out of public view, I think, evidences an attempt to be
discreet.
It wasn't as if Laertes, in a suit and tie, got up from his desk, stretched,
looked outside his window, and decided it was fine day to relieve himself against a wall
outside in public view.
The damaged parking lot isn't an operating room or a lounge for patients.
But the department wants to try the case and use some adverse action it took
against him about 20 years ago…Stay tuned for the outcome.
* * *
Some of you may've heard of the movie, "The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez," with
Edward James Olmos. It was based upon the book, "With His Pistol in His
Hand," by Dr. Americo Paredes, a longtime anthropology and English professor at the
University of Texas.
On May 5th this year, Dr. Paredes died. He was 83. The Times said he was "a scholar on the American
Southwest whose seminal writings challenged the conventional histories of life along the
Texas-Mexico border and helped shape a positive cultural identity among Mexican
Americans."
In her CD "Frontejas," singer-songwriter Tish Hinojosa wrote the
following corrido, "Con su pluma en su mano" in his honor and which goes,
in part, as follows:
Con su pluma en su mano
With his pen in his hand
corazón de fiel chicano
heart of true Chicano
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