Character Complaint - Melvyn Pettersen

[Acetrea]

BYOND Key: Acetrea
Game ID: csd-aJyn
Player Byond Key/Character name: Melvyn Pettersen
Staff involved: N/A
Reason for complaint: Putting down other Doctors and pushing around other Doctors who are his superiors and angering other Heads of Staff (insubordination)
Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? No, from my side of things, I didn't know him well and looked at it from the point of view of a stressful situation. Then everything started adding up little by little in each round and each time it didn't seem like enough material to ahelp about.
Approximate Date/Time: 1/28/2024, 2/09/2024, 2/10/2024

Melvyn Pettersen constantly puts down other doctors who are his superiors, making crude jokes over common, and even upsetting other heads of staff. In one case as my Surgeon (that I sadly don't have screenshots of) an antag(s) had put a few of the Crew into medbay and they all needed surgery. Medbay was understaffed at the time (just me, Pettersen, a Pharmacist, and a First Responder) and I was working on someone with around 2-4 Arterial Bleeds. Pettersen proceeded to criticize my way of Surgery from the opposite OR table while he worked on his own patient, telling me that I shouldn't be using hemostat because it would "save time". I proceeded to let him know I was not going to not hemostat bleeds on my patient with multiple ABs. In the same round, he shoved me out of the way of a patient who was on the OR table (switching his character with mine) and proceeded to tell me that it was his patient. I just let him do this because we had other patients who needed surgery and I didn't think it was a good time to start an argument. I don't recall the date for this occurrence, but it was the first time I'd had a bad round with him.

The second time I (and the whole ship) had a bad moment with Pettersen was when he made a distasteful joke about the Violet Dawn. Leo Barnes had asked why the holodeck didn't have a Mars option, as that's where he is from, and Melvyn replied with a joke about how there were concerns about "plasma flooding" the deck. Even Captain Alessia Marino was upset about it.

 

In the same round, he got onto Executive Officer Ebele Mambwe's radar by harassing his assistant (which I believe was a pAI). I don't know exactly what was said/done to the pAI, I just know he was told to watch himself over Medical comms.

 

He tends to make quite a few "plasma" jokes over common.

 

I've heard instances of Melvyn Pettersen making fun of Amelia Dresden walking with a cane, though at the time, I didn't understand the context.

 

In this past round, he berated Amelia right in front of her while speaking Freespeak about the surgical drill misfiring while operating on a Vaurca Miner. He proceeds to say that he knows she can hear him but doesn't care. During the surgery, he says to "feel free to gut [the Vaurca]", and tries to act like he's above his station, saying that Amelia should step aside, insinuating that he is better than her while she is a Physician and he is an Intern.

 

At the end of this last round, he bought a Sol Navy Junior Officer Uniform and a Ceremonial Sword (that he stabbed himself with to prove to the XO he should be able to have it on his person), along with an Interstellar Aid Corps Armband. It was said by IAC Darwin that it was oxymoronic that he wore the two together and CMO Sampio called it mismatched and said it was a good way to get yourself shanked. Amelia added on that if he did get shanked that it would be by "people who served and hate Sol". He proceeded to bring up the Vaurca surgery once again.

 

Overall, I don't think this is how an Intern should act toward those who are meant to be his supervisors as well as his bosses, and his disrespectful behavior would've likely gotten him fired by now.

 

 

 

Edited February 11 by Acetrea
small edit to closing remark

[Sparta9001]

Hi, since my character was mentioned I'll add my piece in.

One of the things I love about playing med is teaching new players how to enjoy it as well. However with Pettersen's case I don't think I've ever seen such an demeaning and antagonistic intern before. His overall demeanor and comments have definitely ruined several med players enjoyment of the round and even taken away from antag's gimmicks for the round because we're too busy wrangling the intern. 

I have spoken to other med players about the issue with the intern and one of them admitted that seeing Pettersen on the manifest means they do not play. I can say myself having dealt with many of his outbursts that I have apprehension about wanting to play a round when Pettersen is on the manifest and I personally feel that his overall personality is a detriment to many other's enjoyment of the round.

I can bring one time that definitely showed his complete lack of any empathy in a profession that would require some.

During a ling round when Amelia was setting up the suits in EVA, a security officer who turned out to be a ling followed her and stung her. After Amelia felt what she assumed to be a needle she quickly fled with the officer on her heels with his disruptor out.

Once she had gone up to the stairs to the infront of medical her attacker gave up the chase and retreated. Obviously Amelia was shaken up by what happened and still had adrenaline running her system as she was running a blood test on herself to attempt to figure out what was injected her. Of course everyone besides the intern was worried about her and trying to figure out what had happened to shake her up like this. As soon as Amelia entered medical Pettersen proceeded to mock and belittle her and once she had explained what happened to her. He said she was "being a drama queen" and didn't act like it was a big deal to be drugged and chased down by someone with a disruptor intending to do harm to her. 

While Amelia was trying to calm down and compose herself he proceeded to make jokes about it and laugh at her. It got to the point where everyone else in medical told him to be quiet and Dale Solomon told him to have some empathy and put himself in her shoes for a minute to which he responded "why should I?" and continued to insult her. to the point where Amelia snapped at him and told him to shut up. His whole demeanor was extremely tone deaf and took away from what the antag did and how that added to the round's overall story. It became less about how there was someone who intended to attack people when they were vulnerable and was on the loose to telling the intern not to make anymore jokes about someone getting attacked. 

There's also been times when his actions and demeanor almost made me think he was an antag for the round with the way he was acting. There was a time where Pettersen decided it was a good idea to walk around with a boot knife. Eventually security found out and confiscated the knife and fined him for it. During the round I had assumed he had done this cause he was an antag so I didn't see any point to ahelp it. Eventually the rest of medical found out what had happened and we decided to ask why he had decided to do this. Ren Hartfort asked him why had kept the knife he found and Pettersen responded "I saw it and I wanted it". Which was odd considering he was acting like he a teenager rather than a medical intern wanting to learn to become a full doctor.

Elaborating on the cane comment, so the reason Amelia had the cane was because she walked with a limp from a botched mechanical installation which made her need a cane till she got it replaced. So Pettersen was mocking the fact she had a disability and needing a cane not to fall over.  And during this a merc was questioning how she definitely looked like a senior doctor because she had said cane. To which he said "finally someone said it" and begin openly laughing and mocking her once again and the fact she needed a cane at all. 

There has been multiple times where he has mocked people calling for medical help on common and demeaning the fact they needed medical at all to begin with. Even if this was life or death for said character which is definitely strikes me as very mean spirted both IC and OOC epically when you're supposed to be a helping hand to them when they are going through something like that IC.

 In conclusion I believe his overall character acts well above believability for the behavior of a medical intern to act to other doctors who are supposed to be his supervisors in his learning to be a full doctor. I think I can speak for myself when I see his behavior is completely unacceptable and should not be tolerated. Thank you for reading this and I hope improvements can be made to rectify this issue for future players.

 

[Bear]

I will be taking this complaint along with @ReadThisNamePlz. I'll be taking some time to read through the complaint and have questions to follow.

[Bear]

After taking some time to read through is all I have some thoughts, but I would like to hear from @tomatik first.

Tomatik can you take a moment to read through this complaint and comment on the points that are being raised? I will have some questions for you after this.

[tomatik]

 The only doctors who can be considered "supervisors" for this case would be, at best, surgeons, the only doctor that is actually considered a direct supervisor is the Chief Medical Officer, as this here thing says.


What they forgot to mention was the fact that there was, in fact, a real plasma fire involved there, we were told to prepare for it, so the reaction followed, none of those are meant to be humorous.

A) Not an Intern, B) Ripped both out of order, context and it's not even true, she gummed the drill four times in a row, Melvyn suggested he could assist, he gets told off, this isn't the first time Dresden has been rude to him, so "feel free to gut him" follows, he gets told to fuck off. Then she gets berated. It wasn't an act above his station, he suggested he could step in, he got told off, he then was told to fuck off, there is no way it could insinuate that he is better than anyone.

It really did happen, it was oxymoronic on purpose, the uniform was mismatched and never stayed on for too long. Melvyn did not, in fact, bring up the varuca surgery, "beat up my patients" line refers to a different incident involving Dresden, who was known to get physical before.

Not an Intern, Not Supervisors, and for sure not his bosses. There are people who have pleasant and good interactions with Melvyn, unfortunately it is specifically not you two.
He follows orders, he follows direct words of his superiors, he does what he can, his disrespectful behaviour that's shown here can be written off as poor people skills, crude humor and horrible interpersonal experiences. Specifically with Petrov and Dresden. Especially Dresden, let's get to her, shall we?
 That's just a lie. First time Melvyn is introduced to the ship, First thing that happens? He gets bullied by Dresden, i wish i was joking, and i have talked about it to others, too, apparently she has a reputation of "steamrolling" through people if they don't fit her criterias, and Melvyn tried to make it up, repeatedly, i might add, to no avail, from words of Dresden, she sees him unfit for service due to her own, personal vision of him. Isn't that a nice way to treat someone? 

To those unfamiliar with the way those things usually work, Residency is a post-graduate education, It roughly goes as follows, Reisdent < Fellow < Attending, Fellows aren't present for obvious reasons. He is an actual, licensed Physician
 Notice how they're repeatedly being called an intern, as to make their stance lesser, but to say, Nobody is really all that busy "Wrangling the intern", the only time it actually has happened was with Dresden specifically, and it was over petty insubordination while she was a stand-in for CMO, needless to say, he got suspended for that shift, and the entire medical team at the time thought of it as unjust.

Speaking of which, Dresden player makes this statement, which is exactly what others have said about Dresden before, and at that, it's not even being backed up, as far as i am aware, the only people to activelly have a problem with Pettersen are you two, i am not unreachable, i have been contacted by players before, and we, on average, managed to better the situations somewhat.

Complete lack of empathy towards the preson who has, before, on record, went out of their way to hurt him.

This is a breakdown of events nobody at the time was aware of, aside from Dresden

And this isn't exactly what happened, that sort of thing would be just highly moronic to do. How can you expect empathy if all interactions you had with him prior were highly negative, and not entirely coming from Melvyn, neither.

Except it's not at all what was said. The exact wording was "I got IED'd", clearly a lie, we all knew it, it wasn't about mocking a disability or needing a cane, it was about making shit up.

Dresden was called old, that's what the point of "finally someone said it" and openly laughing was about, nothing about her disability, nothing about the cane, "she's old" is the joke.

I genuinely have no idea what this refers to.
 Not an intern, once again. The worst part is the player specifically knows that he isn't an intern, this is being done on purpose.
This is mostly he-said-she-said, hearsay. Some of the screencaps provided directly contradict what's being said
My DMs are open for any and all questions, any communications attempts and so on, it would be lovely if we could smooth over the edges at least a little bit.             

Edited March 2 by tomatik
While trying to fix pictures, i broke them more than anything. Guh!

[Acetrea]

14 hours ago, tomatik said:

The only doctors who can be considered "supervisors" for this case would be, at best, surgeons,

Although it may seem like a Resident is a completely different role from an Intern, it really isn't. In the Character Creation menu, Medical Intern and the Resident roles are all grouped into the same option.

The specific reason as to why these roles were added was to allow an Intern to specialize in something: 

"It'd be neat to let interns have alt titles that very visibly shows what role they want to train for so medical staff proper immediately have a good idea of what they need to teach the intern." Residents are still Interns and all other medical roles are 100% their Supervisors, as the screenshot that you posted says: "CMO and probably all other medical." The 'probably all other medical' part is not a throwaway line for laughs. Lastly, that screenshot you posted of the wiki actually comes from the Medical Intern job guide, which is the role you are denying that Melvyn is.

 

14 hours ago, tomatik said:

Melvyn did not, in fact, bring up the varuca surgery, "beat up my patients" line refers to a different incident involving Dresden, who was known to get physical before.

This is something I'd like for you to elaborate on since I was watching the entire conversation as a ghost and there was nothing else that led me to believe that Melvyn was talking about another incident. I've never known Dresden to beat on her patients, which is why this is surprising to me.

 

14 hours ago, tomatik said:

He follows orders, he follows direct words of his superiors

 

Sadly in the round you and I recently played in, this was not the case. Anya had specifically asked Melvyn if it was clear that he was not to do surgery unsupervised and after a snarky comment, she directly ordered him to step away repeatedly, and he did not until the surgery was finished.

 

14 hours ago, tomatik said:

There are people who have pleasant and good interactions with Melvyn, unfortunately it is specifically not you two.

I'm very glad that there are people who enjoy Melvyn, but fellow Surgeons and Physicians, even CMOs whom I speak to about Melvyn's behavior when we are all in the round, agree with me that Melvyn's behavior is at the very least unusual. Names include Mako Wu, Ben Donitz, Leslie Asoya, Ren Hartfort, Lope Cardenas, Maryah Marakova, Aleena Sovaair, and Seoyeon Park- all of which are long-time medical players and are established as such.

14 hours ago, tomatik said:

i am not unreachable, i have been contacted by players before, and we, on average, managed to better the situations somewhat

I'd like to separate you as a person from your character, seeing as this is a character complaint and not a player complaint. I hope to come out of this character complaint with a better understanding of what's going on, as I prefer some sort of mediation when it comes to things like this. This is my way of reaching out to you and saying, "Hey, I don't think your character would be able to reasonably act like this on this ship."

 

14 hours ago, tomatik said:

Complete lack of empathy towards the preson who has, before, on record, went out of their way to hurt him.

I'm interested to know where this record is.

14 hours ago, tomatik said:

The exact wording was "I got IED'd", clearly a lie, we all knew it, it wasn't about mocking a disability or needing a cane, it was about making shit up.

As far as I know, Amelia was a Captain in the Solarian Army. I don't doubt that she was hit with an IED, and I'm pretty sure something like it is in her medical records. I don't see any reason for why Sparta would just "make shit up."

And as someone who plays with Sparta often and is good friends with them, I can say that they've been the target of a lot of undeserved hate. I've never known them to be a misanthrope to Medical Players or to steamroll through people. I see them constantly roleplaying with people in Medical and being friends with almost everybody, which is more than I can say I do. But nonetheless, Dresden is not who this character complaint is about.

Edited March 2 by Acetrea
formatting edit, names added

[tomatik]

8 hours ago, Acetrea said:

which is the role you are denying that Melvyn is

That's the point of alt titles, isn't it? If we are to believe that this is, in fact, a roleplaying game, it would be silly to treat someone off the mechanical limitations of the game, no?

8 hours ago, Acetrea said:

The 'probably all other medical' part is not a throwaway line for laughs

"Probably" is unfortunately not concrete, and if we do focus on the page itself as is, isn't that fun, we roleplayed and *made up* the fact that one needs to be supervised in order to perform their duties. Which isn't a problem because it's a game and all but still.

8 hours ago, Acetrea said:

she directly ordered him to step away repeatedly, and he did not until the surgery was finished.

in what world do you just expect the surgery to end in the middle of it? Petrova was not a colleague nor were she observing the process. That's irresponsible, harmful and breaks any sort of work ethic one could follow. 

8 hours ago, Acetrea said:

I've never known Dresden to beat on her patients

Actually happened in a round Melvyn once was in, got in a fight and all, and she is handsy, it's not exactly surprising

8 hours ago, Acetrea said:

I'd like to separate you as a person from your character, seeing as this is a character complaint and not a player complaint.

I'm the guy who makes Melvyn move, if there are actual problems with Melvyn, i can fix them, small corrections can avoid big troubles in the future

8 hours ago, Acetrea said:

I'm interested to know where this record is.

i assume you do keep the logs, at least round IDs and such when you take screencaps, so, that's your record, hostility in those isn't one-sided.

8 hours ago, Acetrea said:

As far as I know, Amelia was a Captain in the Solarian Army. I don't doubt that she was hit with an IED, and I'm pretty sure something like it is in her medical records. I don't see any reason for why Sparta would just "make shit up."

Isn't it crazy how one day you wake up and a guy you knows turns up with a cane and a cast, what happens, you ask him, he wasn't like this yesterday, or a week ago, and he says, "a giant robot attacked me", that can't be true, there were no giant robot attacks lately. I doubt Solarian Captains get IED on their civilian assignments in the middle of the workweek without at least notifying others, you know, like an actual IED attack.

8 hours ago, Acetrea said:

And as someone who plays with Sparta often and is good friends with them

That's personal experience, of course you'd get along well ingame if you get along out of it, you wouldn't see or notice all the sharp edges and rough surfaces, that's just how friends work.

[Bear]

After reviewing the evidence, I have resolved this player complaint. The matter is handled and we will reach out on discord.