I’m sure we’ve all had jobs that only currently exist in our heads as embarrassingly detailed revenge fantasies, orgies of imagined chaos and destruction. That’s pretty normal, I think, and generally harmless. What’s less normal and harmless is actually acting out these brutal reveries, like a 38-year-old ex-Mercedes employee did in a Basque, Spain-area Mercedes plant.
Mercedes’ Vitoria factory is their second-largest van factory globally and builds Vito and V-Class vans. The former Auto-Union factory was the site of the (now ex) employee’s December 30 rampage, where he stole a 17-ton Caterpillar wheel-loader being used for infrastructure work at the plant and used it to destroy more than 50 just-built vans being stored in the factory’s parking lot.
The employee then attempted to do some real damage and attempted to drive the loader into the production line itself, which would have caused some catastrophic damage and production delays, but maintenance teams and security guards were able to alert police in time to stop the destruction.
What’s notable is that at the time of the rampage, the employee was still working for Mercedes, and the whole wild night was seemingly performed in response to rumors about possible mass layoffs.
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that this isn’t going to help things much.