What do mosquitoes and mosquito control workers share in common?
Apparently both prey on others.
Mosquitoes for obvious reasons. Mosquito control workers for sticking it to taxpayers.
(...)
A citizen's complaint triggered an eight-month investigation in which officials cross-referenced data from previously installed truck GPS trackers with daily employee inspection records, Director Craig Simmons said.
As a result of the investigation, three mosquito control workers also were fired in late June.
"With the fiscal position the county government's in, with pending layoffs, we couldn't fathom why employees would choose to do something like this when we have the ability to track them," Simmons said.
Spray-truck personnel are typically unsupervised about seven hours a day, Simmons said. Each week, they inspect about 8,000 mosquito-prone sites across 86 geographic spray zones along the Space Coast.
The GPS investigation examined on-the-clock activities during a seven-week span from August to September 2009. Disciplinary letters reveal details about the terminated workers' alleged misdeeds during that timeframe:
A technician made 20 unauthorized trips to the Port St. John Public Library and drove home 78 times.When his supervisor told him he did not have permission to visit the library, the worker responded: "That's a lie from the pits of hell! That's a lie. That's a lie. That's a lie. That's a lie!" his notice of dismissal shows.
It didn't take a GPS to foresee this type of tracking merge into the mainstream.
