Workplace tensions usually aren't headline news. After all, what staff doesn't include employees grousing about the boss?
But when the setting is a county coroner's office and a pattern of complaints are aimed at the highly paid son of a nationally known pathologist, the situation isn't routine.
Chad Selweki, a 28-year veteran of The Macomb Daily, takes an in-depth look at turnover on the staff of Dr. Daniel Spitz, the suburban county's medical examiner since 2004.
Dr. Spitz . . . is accused by his former colleagues of running a “tyrannical” regime at the county morgue and forcing out every member of the staff he inherited from his father, world-renowned medical examiner Dr. Werner Spitz. . . .
In separate interviews with The Macomb Daily, four former employees used similar words to describe Spitz as a boss: arrogant, erratic, vindictive, condescending. . . .
Dr. Daniel Spitz says critics couldn't handle the pace and disliked modernization moves.
[Photo from Fox 2 News]
Selweski speaks with the coroner's former chief investigator, Sherri Huntley, who retired prematurely this month after nearly 30 years on the staff -- "the fourth staffer to quit in the past year."
Huntley said she was so hampered by anxiety and stress due to Daniel Spitz’s combative management style that she retired two years early and gave up $100,000 in pension benefits due her under a deferred compensation plan.
“I think Daniel was picking us off, one by one by one,” she said. “Daniel was very rude and disrespectful.”
The reporter writes that Spitz "counters that his critics are disgruntled former employees who could not keep up with a demanding workload and his efforts to modernize the morgue operations."
