Would you make your boss drink water from the toilet?

It’s a fact of life that in any job you are likely to receive some form of criticism from your boss.

If criticism is done well then it really isn’t criticism but instead is a form of feedback.

Making sure that the feedback is fair and reasonable can help ensure a productive workplace exists.

It’s also important how you react to receiving feedback. If you take the points on board and can learn from things then it will no doubt help you improve your performance.

It’s not always the case however that people take criticism or feedback that well.

Jonathan Oliver, a 40 year old from Hampshire in the UK had a job whereby he created designs for gravestones.  Note that I said “had a job” rather than “has a job”.

The reason he no longer has a job is that his boss criticised his work and he reacted in a far from professional way to her criticism.

After the criticism he secretly filled the sports style water drinking bottle that his boss brought to work with water from the toilet.

Luckily for his boss she noticed that the water tasted a bit funny and didn’t drink enough to make herself seriously ill.

His boss wasn’t flushed with happiness over this though and was understandably pretty upset. The police were called and further investigation led them to Mr Oliver who admitted filling her bottle with water from the toilet.

He was recently sentenced to a four month suspended prison sentence and has to carry out 150 hours of unpaid community service work.

The lawyer defending him was quoted as saying that his client had reacted to problems at work in “an entirely inappropriate fashion”.